www.ijraset.

com Volume 2 Issue XII, December 2014

ISSN: 2321-9653
International Journal for Research in Applied Science & Engineering
Technology (IJRASET)
Overview and Comparative Study of Different
Microcontrollers
Rajratna Khadse1, Nitin Gawai2, Bagwan M. Faruk3
1
Assist.Professor, Electronics Engineering Department, RCOEM, Nagpur
2,3
Assist.Professor, E & Tc Engineering Department, JDIET, Yavatmal
Abstract—A microcontroller is a small and low-cost computer built for the purpose of dealing with specific tasks, such as
displaying information on seven segment display at railway platform or receiving information from a television’s remote
control. Microcontrollers are mainly used in products that require a degree of control to be exerted by the user. Today
various types of microcontrollers are available in market with different word lengths such as 8bit, 16bit, 32bit, and
microcontrollers. Microcontroller is a compressed microcomputer manufactured to control the functions of embedded
systems in office machines, robots, home appliances, motor vehicles, and a number of other gadgets. Therefore in today’s
technological world lot of things done with the help of Microcontroller. Depending upon the applications we have to choose
particular types of Microcontroller. The aim of this paper to give the basic information of microcontroller and comparative
study of 8051 Microcontroller, ARM Microcontroller, PIC Microcontroller and AVR Microcontroller
Keywords— Microcontroller, Memory, Instruction, cycle, bit, architecture

I. INTRODUCTION

Microcontrollers have directly or indirectly impact on our daily life. Usually, But their presence is unnoticed at most of the
places like:
At supermarkets in Cash Registers, Weighing Scales, Video games ,security system , etc.
At home in Ovens, Washing Machines, Alarm Clocks, paging, VCR, LASER Printers, color printers etc.
At Toys, Cellular phones, Climate control, Fax Machine, Musical instruments, Stereo Equipment, etc.
At office in Typewriters, Photocopiers, Elevators, Transmission control, etc.
In industry in Industrial Automation, safety systems, Sewing Machine, Camcorder, etc
Traffic Signals, Railways platform etc
What inside them makes these machines smart? The answer is microcontroller.
Creating applications for the microcontrollers is different than any other development job in electronics and computing. Before
selecting a particular device for an application, it is important to understand what the different options and features are and what
they can mean with regard to developing the application [1].

A. How is Microcontrollers Classified?

The microcontrollers are characterized regarding bus-width, instruction set, and memory structure. For the same family, there
may be different forms with different sources. This paper also is going to describe some of the basic types of the
Microcontroller that newer users may not know about.
1) Classification according to number of bits
a) The 8-bit microcontroller: Means CPU or ALU can process 8 bit data at a time. The examples of 8-bit microcontrollers are
Intel 8031/8051. These are used in position control, speed control applications [2].

2) The 16-bit microcontroller: It performs greater precision and performance as compared to 8-bit. These are developed for
the purpose of high speed applications such as servo control system, Robotics etc. Some examples of 16-bit microcontroller
are 16-bit MCUs are extended Intel 8096 and Motorola MC68HC12 families [2].
3) 32-bit microcontroller: It uses the 32-bit instructions to perform the arithmetic and logic operations These are developed
for the purpose of very high speed application in Image processing, Telecommunications , Intelligent control system etc [3].
Some examples are Intel/Atmel 251 family, PIC3x, ARM.

B. Classification according to memory devices

1) Embedded memory microcontroller: When an embedded system has a microcontroller unit that has all the functional
blocks available on a chip is called an embedded microcontroller. For example, 8051 having program & data memory, I/O

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www.ijraset.com Volume 2 Issue XII, December 2014
ISSN: 2321-9653
International Journal for Research in Applied Science & Engineering
Technology (IJRASET)
ports, serial communication, counters and timers and interrupts on the chip is an embedded microcontroller[2].

2) External Memory Microcontroller: When an embedded system has a microcontroller unit that has not all the functional
blocks available on a chip is called an external memory microcontroller. For example, 8031 has no program memory on the
chip is an external memory microcontroller [2].

C. Classification according to instruction set

1) CISC architecture: CISC means complex instruction set computer, it allows the user to apply 1 instruction as an alternative
to many simple instructions [6].

Fig. 1 CISC architecture

2) RISC architecture: RISC means Reduced Instruction Set Computers. RISC reduces the operation time by shortening the
clock cycle per instruction. The RISC gives a better execution than the CISC [6].

Fig. 2 RISC architecture

D) Classification according to memory architecture

1) Harvard Memory Architecture Microcontroller: The point when a microcontroller unit has a dissimilar memory address
space for the program and data memory, the microcontroller has Harvard memory architecture in the processor. The RISC gives
a better execution than the CISC[8].

Fig.3 Harvard architecture

2)Princeton Memory Architecture Microcontroller: The point when a microcontroller has a common memory address for the
program memory and data memory, the microcontroller has Princeton memory architecture in the processor [8].

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www.ijraset.com Volume 2 Issue XII, December 2014
ISSN: 2321-9653
International Journal for Research in Applied Science & Engineering
Technology (IJRASET)

Fig. 4 Princeton architecture

II. TYPES OF MICROCONTROLLER

A. 8051 Microcontroller
8051 microcontroller is an eight bit microcontroller invented in 1981 by Intel Corporation. It is available in 40 pin DIP i.e. dual
in line package. This is the basic Microcontroller but still many companies are manufacturing such types of Microcontroller.
The older types of 8051 have 12 clocks per instruction that make it sluggish whereas the recent 8051 have 6 clocks per
instruction. The 8051 microcontroller does not have an in built memory bus and A/D converters and such Microcontrollers are
CISC processors, also 8051 uses Von Neuman architecture [8].

Fig.5 Intel 8051 Microcontroller

Various features of 8051 microcontroller are given as follows.

1) 8-bit CPU
2) 16-bit Program Counter
3) 8-bit Processor Status Word (PSW)
4) 8-bit Stack Pointer
5) 4K bytes internal ROM (program memory).
6) 128 bytes internal RAM (data memory).
7) Special Function Registers (SFRs) of 128 bytes
8) 32 I/O pins arranged as four 8-bit ports (P0 – P3)
9) Two 16-bit timer/counters : T0 and T1
10) Two external and three internal vectored interrupts
11) One full duplex serial I/O [7].

B. PIC Microcontroller
Peripheral interface controller is a family of Microcontrollers by Microchip technology USA with Havard architecture.
Originally this was developed as supporting device for PDP (program data processor) computers to support for its peripheral
devices and therefore named as PIC. PIC Microcontrollers are RISC processors. An interesting thing about PIC is that its
machine cycle consists of only 4 clock pulses in contrast with 12 clock pulses in Intel 8051 Microcontroller. PIC
microcontrollers are finding their way into new applications like smart phones, audio accessories, video gaming peripherals and
advanced medical devices [5].

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www.ijraset.com Volume 2 Issue XII, December 2014
ISSN: 2321-9653
International Journal for Research in Applied Science & Engineering
Technology (IJRASET)
Fig.6 PIC 16F877

Various features of PIC 16F877 microcontroller are given as follows

1) High-performance RISC CPU

2) Up to 8K x 14 words of FLASH program memory
3) 35 Instructions (fixed length encoding-14-bit)
4) 368×8 static RAM based data memory
5) Up to 256 x 8 bytes of EEPROM data memory
6) Interrupt capability (up to 14 sources)
7) Three addressing modes (direct, indirect, relative)
8) Power-on reset (POR)
9) Harvard architecture memory
10) Power saving SLEEP mode
11) Wide operating voltage range: 2.0V to 5.5V
12) High sink / source current: 25mA
13) Accumulator based machine[5].

C. ARM Microcontroller
ARM is 32 bit Microcontroller whose core is designed by ARM Limited with RISC architecture. ARM has von Neumann
architecture (program and RAM in the same space). ARM Microcontrollers are extremely used in power saving and operate in
very low power consumption. ARM MicrocontrollersWidely used in modern handset for mobile communications. These are
also used in various other embedded sysstem likes iPOD,hand held gaming unit,disk driver and so on. 8051 and PIC need
multiple clock cycles per instruction. AVR and ARM execute most instructions in a single clock cycle [4].

Fig. 7 ARM microcontroller

Various features of ARM microcontroller are given as follows

1) Maximum single cycle functioning
2) Constant 16×32 bit register file.
3) Load or store architecture.
4) Preset instruction width of 32 bits so as to simplify pipe-lining and decoding, at minimized code density.
5) For misaligned memory access there is no support [4].

D. AVR Microcontroller
The AVR is a modified Harvard RISC architecture 8-bit RISC single-chip microcontroller, which is developed by Atmel in
1996. The AVR is stands for Alf-Egil Bogen and Vegard Wollan’s RISC processor. AVR takes only one clock per instruction

1) AVR Microcontrollers are classified into three types

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www.ijraset.com Volume 2 Issue XII, December 2014
ISSN: 2321-9653
International Journal for Research in Applied Science & Engineering
Technology (IJRASET)
a) TinyAVR – Less memory, small size, suitable only for simpler applications.
b) MegaAVR – These are the most popular ones having good amount of memory (up to 256 KB), higher number of
inbuilt peripherals and suitable for moderate to complex applications.
c) XmegaAVR – Used commercially for complex applications, which require large program memory and high speed [5].

Fig. 8 ATMEGA 16

Some of the features of Atmega16 are:

a) 16KB of Flash memory

b) 1KB of SRAM
c) 512 Bytes of EEPROM
d) Available in 40-Pin DIP
e) 8-Channel 10-bit ADC
f) Two 8-bit Timers/Counters
g) One 16-bit Timer/Counter
h) 4 PWM Channels
i) In System Programmer (ISP)
j) Serial USART
k) SPI Interface
l) Digital to Analog Comparator [5].

III. CONCLUSION

There are different microcontroller products are available, It is clear that these devices can be applied to many embedded system
designs from the simple hardware control applications to signal processing applications. The choice of devices available today
is vast. Therefore we must know what type of Microcontroller suitable for particular applications. This paper will help us to
select a particular Microcontroller for specific applications.

REFERENCES

[1] M. A. Mazidi, R.D . M ckinlay and Danny Causey ,2013, “PIC Microcontroller and Embedded system using Assembly and C for PIC18, ” Pearson
publication, p.3 .
[2] Raj Kamal ,2009, “Microcontroller:Architecture,programming interfacing and system design,”Pearson education,pp.5-7
[3] Manas Kumar Parai,Banasree Das,Gautam Das, “An overview of Microcontroller unit:From proper selection to specific application,” International Journel
of soft computing and Engineering ,ISSN:2231-2307,volume-2,Issue-6,January.
[4] http://www.electronicshub.org/microcontrollers
[5] http://www.elprocus.com/microcontrollers-types-and-applications
[6] http://oozden.wordpress.com/2013/02/08/cisc-architecture-and-risc-architecture
[7] http://nptel.ac.in/courses/Webcourse-contents/IIT-kanpur/microcontrollers/micro/lecture5/lec5_1.htm
[8] http://www.engineersgarage.com/8051-microcontroller

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