On 06/29/2017 03:45 PM, - - wrote:
This is dangerous territory. There are plenty of absolutely current processors which just happen to be 8-bit architectures. 8-bits doesn't imply anything at all about age. (I know YOU know this, this is mainly for the benefit of folks here who might be stuck on certain assumptions)
And I sincerely hope nobody here actually considers RPi to be a "microcontroller"...with its video, keyboard/mouse interface, network interface... Wow. ;)
There are a lot of gray areas and certainly quite a bit of overlap.
8035/8047/8051 Familes - Microcontroller (love the 8052, a ton of RAM at 256Bs!)
No argument here.
8018x - Microcontroller
There are full-blown MS-DOS PCs built around these.
Z180 - Microcontroller (my Circuit Cellar/Micromint boards run on these)
There are full-blown CP/M desktop systems built around these.
Z8 - Microcontroller (I think)
Yes.
6800 - Microprocessor (no internal RAM/ROM) 6802 - Microcontroller (? has RAM, no ROM) 6807 - Microcontroller (I have one with a piggy back for EPROM) 68HC11 - Microcontroller (I have the A0 which has the ROM disabled) AVRs - Microcontrollers
No argument.
PIC32 - Microcontroller (well that's what they're call by Microchip though some could be SoC)
...until you put UNIX on one, which has been done.
ARM - Oh I give up ;-). Many are Microcontrollers but since ARM is licensed IP and not hardware it's up to the manufacturer.
So as I said, gray areas. For several of them, I think whether or not it's reasonable to consider it a microcontroller may be based on its use in a given application. Z80s are used in plenty of embedded applications. The metric that I usually use (as an embedded systems designer) is whether or not it has on-chip RAM and ROM. But then some of the microcontrollers I use don't, so.. Much like the "firsts", we're splitting hairs and trying to rigidly define something that's fairly fluid. -Dave -- Dave McGuire, AK4HZ New Kensington, PA