The 8051 is a microcontroller which was developed
first by Intel during the early 80s. The first chip that was developed
was the 80C31 Rom-less microcontroller which later on evolved to 8051
OTPs to the 87C51/8751H EPROM versions. Other versions of the chipset
produced the 87C751 (28 pin devices).
What can this chip do?
The chip is actually a computer in a single
chip which has two(2) 16Bit timers, one (1) UART, 128 Bytes of SRAM,
4KBytes of Program Memory and a priority configurable interrupts.
Not to mention the Instruction sets, the chip can
perform 8bit / 16bit calculations with Multiply/Divide/Modulo by just
executing a single Mnemonic (instruction).
The 8051(s) also has a capability to access external
peripheral devices which is interfaced to the chip. Simply enable
EA(External Access) pin and the microcontroller is now functioning
as a basic microprocessor with the system bus accessible through the
ports.
The 8051 Family now.
The 8051 microcontroller has been produced
by Philips and added other features in it 8051XA series.Atmel Corporation
also started producing Flash versions of the said chips creating 89C51
Flash microcontrollers. Dallas Semiconductor also tried to produce
the chip and try to speed-up the system by reducing its instruction
cycles from 12 to just 4 only. The latest by Dallas Semiconductor
is putting 8051 in their I-Button program. They added JAVA core program
inside the 80C51 core so that the microcontrollers can now be communicated
through the web.
The 8051 microcontroller can be used in a system wherein
there is a need for an intensive mathematical operation.
RPB
