Microcontrollers

the beginning of the rearrangement of the IC page

Microcontrollers

Microcontrollers are little computers on a single Die/Package. The computer includes a CPU core, RAM, ROM/FLASH, and peripherals including UARTS, A/D converters, SPI, and I2C. Microcontrollers differ from microprocessors in that the microporcessors generally have bigger more powerful central processing units, but need support chips for ram, rom and other peripherals. Most modern microcontrollers use FLASH ram instead of a ROM so they can be programmed over and over. Many modern microcontrollers allow self-flashing to enable bootloading or a firmware update without pulling the chip from the circuit or using a programmer/debugger. Microcontrollers tend to be more optimizated for writting in assembly then PCs, but C and less so Basic are becoming the standard programming languages.

General

I've written a little about the various kinds of microcontrollers at Wikibooks: Embedded Systems. --DavidCary 06:15, 10 March 2007 (PST)

PIC

The best microcontroller.

• PIC Links A bunch of links to PIC based information.
• Microchip PIC 8 bit FLASH microcontrollers
• Microchip dsPIC/PIC24 16 bit FLASH microcontrollers ( DsPIC30F 5011 Development Board )
• Microchip PIC32 32 bit FLASH microcontrollers

External Links:

AVR

AVR or Atmel. The best microcontroller.

• Atmel AVR 8 bit FLASH microcontrollers

Cypress

• Cypress PSoC 8 bit FLASH microcontrollers. The best microcontroller.

External Links:

Other Needs to be Organized

• LPC2103 Low cost 70MHz ARM7TDMI-S FLASH Microcontroller from Philips. The "$49" "Coridium ARMmite" does use this chip.

• Main Page May have been a one man effort, now dropped. Has a bit of content that looks good.