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05 8th, 2008| 
Chapter 2 : 8051 Microcontroller Architecture
* 2.1 What is 8051 Standard?
* 2.2 8051 Microcontroller’s pins
* 2.3 Input/Output Ports (I/O Ports)
* 2.4 8051 Microcontroller Memory Organisation
* 2.5 SFRs (Special Function Registers)
* 2.6 Counters and Timers
* 2.7 UART (Universal Asynchronous Receiver and Transmitter)
* 2.8 8051 Microcontroller Interrupts
* 2.9 8051 Microcontroller Power Consumption Control
2.1 What is 8051 Standard?
Microcontrollers’ producers have been struggling for a long time for attracting more and more choosy customers. Every couple of days a new chip with a higher operating frequency, more memory and more high-quality A/D converters comes on the market.
Nevertheless, by analyzing their structure it is concluded that most of them have the same (or at least very similar) architecture known in the product catalogs as “8051 compatible”. What is all this about?
The whole story began in the far 80s when Intel launched its series of the microcontrollers labelled with MCS 051. Although, several circuits belonging to this series had quite modest features in comparison to the new ones, they took over the world very fast and became a standard for what nowadays is ment by a word microcontroller.
The reason for success and such a big popularity is a skillfully chosen configuration which satisfies needs of a great number of the users allowing at the same time stable expanding ( refers to the new types of the microcontrollers ). Besides, since a great deal of software has been developed in the meantime, it simply was not profitable to change anything in the microcontroller’s basic core. That is the reason for having a great number of various microcontrollers which actually are solely upgraded versions of the 8051 family. What is it what makes this microcontroller so special and universal so that almost all the world producers manufacture it today under different name ?
8051 Microcontroller Overview
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