What is Microcontroller? How Microcontroller Works? Basics of Microcontroller

Monday, October 15, 2012 , ,

Microcontroller Wiki
Microcontroller Chip
In today's world of technology, we found Microcontrollers in almost every electronic device we uses. Almost all general purpose devices such as Digital Watches, Washing Machines, CD/DVD Players, Mobile Phones and Microwave Ovens works on the bases of Microcontroller.
Microcontroller is similar to a Personal Computer or a CPU but instead of interacting with human beings they interact with other machines. Basically, Microcontrollers were developed for making process automated. They are being used in Embedded Systems. Let Us have a look at What is Microcontroller and How it Works.
You may also like: Introduction To Microcontroller 8051

What is Microcontroller?

A Microcontroller is a IC chip that executes programs for controlling other devices or machines. It is a micro (small size as its a Integrated Circuit chip) device which is used for control of other devices and machines thats why it is called 'Microcontroller'. It is a Microprocessor having RAM,ROM and I/O ports.
           World's first Microcontroller was TMS 1000 which was developed in 1971 and was commercially released in 1974. It was developed by engineers Gary Boone and Michael Cochran.

How Microcontroller Works? 

Although, there are many microcontrollers and even more programs available for microcontrollers, but most of them have most things in common. Thus if we able to learn any one of them then we can handle others also.
You may also like: Architecture & Block Diagram of 8051
        Microcontroller is very fast device (slower than computer) , so every instruction executed in Microcontroller at very fast speed. Its functioning is given below:
  • When the power supply is turned ON, the quartz oscillator being enabled by Control Logic Register. In the first few milliseconds, while the first preparations are in progress, the parasite capacitors are being charged.
  • When the Voltage level reaches its max value and frequency of quartz oscillator becomes stable, the process of writing bits on special function registers (SFRs) started. Everything occurs according to the clock of the oscillator and over all electronics starts working. All this takes very few nano seconds.
  • PC or Program counter is reset to zero address of the program memory. Then the address of the instructions sent to Instruction Decoder which decodes the instructions and thus executes them.
  • After execution of one instruction, the address of program counter is incremented by 1 and thus sending the address of next instruction to instruction decoder and executes the next instructions.
Read More About Microcontollers :