Microprocessor vs. Microcontroller: Key Differences – Moonpreneur
Microprocessor vs. Microcontroller: Key Differences
What is a Microprocessor?
Microprocessors are only made up of a CPU that is a central Processing Unit and they are used to do many complex tasks. Along with a CPU we also need many other components to complete some tasks or processes. These other parts are connected with the processor using external connections.
Microprocessors are not mainly used for specific tasks but they are mostly used for complicated and tricky tasks which require high memory and complex coding. Microprocessors are mostly used in the following devices:
scientific calculators, accounting systems, games machines, complex industrial controllers, traffic lights, defense systems, computation systems, and more.
(All the above operations are complex and they need to process the complicated data.)
What is a Microcontroller?
Microcontrollers are designed to do a specific task or any assigned task in loops. You need some special tools to upload the program on the controller chips. Once the code is uploaded on the chip we don’t need to upload it once again on the chip unless and until we want our microcontroller to do another task.
The process is fixed in the microcontroller and the output depends on the user inputs or inputs from the sensors or fixed inputs.
Microcontrollers are mainly used in the following devices: mobile phones, automobiles, CD/DVD players, washing machines, cameras, security alarms, keyboard controllers, microwave oven, watches, and mp3 players.
Difference Between Microprocessor and Microcontroller:
In the above image, we can see the microprocessor is part of a microcontroller with extra memory RAM, ROM, input-output devices, timers, etc.
| Microprocessor | Microcontroller |
| Microprocessors are mainly used in computer systems. | Microcontrollers are mainly used in embedded systems. |
| It is just a microprocessor alone, so we need to connect memory and I/O devices externally to make it work. | The microcontroller already has memory and I/O devices connected internally with the processor. |
| It uses external connections to interface to RAM, ROM and other peripherals. | All devices are connected internally. |
| As memory, I/O devices and other peripherals are connected externally it makes the processor looks bulky. | Memory, I/O devices and other peripherals are already connected internally with the processor so the size of the circuit is comparatively small. |
| The overall cost of the system increases as we need to connect external devices with it. | The overall cost of the system is less as all devices are on a single chip. |
| We can connect external memory in ranges of megabytes and even gigabytes. But speed is less due to more memory handling. | As memory devices are present on board the speed of operations is more as compared to microprecessors. |
| Due to the bulky size, you can’t use it in a compact system. | Due to less size microcontroller is the best option to be used in compact systems. |
| The total power consumption is high for microprocessors as external devices are being used. Therefore, they are not fit to use in devices running on stored power like batteries. | The total power consumption is less for microcontrollers as all devices are present internally. So they can be used with devices running on stored power like batteries. |
| Microprocessors do not either have power-saving modes. | Most of the microcontrollers have different power-saving modes. |
| A microprocessor can do multiple tasks at the same time. | A microcontroller can only do a single task at a time. |
| Microprocessors do not have different memory modules to store programs and data. | Microcontrollers have different memory modules to store programs and data. |
| The speed of the microprocessor can be high due to higher clock speed as they are used in complex operations. | The speed of microcontroller-based systems is slow as compared to microprocessors. |
| Microprocessors can process a large number of instructions and can handle a large amount of data at a time. | Microcontrollers can process simple and less number of instructions. |
Now let us learn the difference between a famous microcontroller board Arduino Uno and microprocessor Raspberry Pi.
|
Arduino Uno |
Raspberry Pi |
| Arduino is an 8-bit microcontroller board. It can process 8 bits of data at a time. | Raspberry Pi is a 64-bit microprocessor-based mini computer. It can process 64 bits of data at a time. |
| Arduino Board can not be used as a computer. | Raspberry Pi itself is a mini-computer. |
| As Arduino is a microcontroller board, it contains the CPU, RAM, and ROM on the chip. The additional devices on the Arduino Board are to connect the power supply and to connect input/output devices with the board. | Raspberry Pi is a mini-computer and it has a processor, memory devices, graphics driver on the board. Many other ports to connect the display, a camera module, audio device and others are present on board. |
| The clock speed of Arduino is 16 MHz. | The clock speed of Raspberry Pi is 1.2 GHz. |
| The RAM present on the Arduino Uno board is 2KB. | The latest version of Raspberry Pi has RAM of 1GB. |
|
Arduino is mostly used in embedded systems that use input devices like sensors, buttons and output devices like LEDs, motors, LCDs, etc. On Arduino, the GPIO(General Purpose Input Output Pins) are named as Digital IO for digital Input and Output and Analog IN for Analog Input. |
Raspberry Pi is mostly used for developing software applications using Python. |
| Arduino board does not require any operating system to work. You need compiled source code to upload on the Arduino board. | Raspberry Pi uses an operating system to run, just like our computers have Windows, Macintosh, or Linux but for Raspberry Pi, we have other operating systems like Raspberry Pi OS (previously known as Raspbian OS) which is specially designed for Raspberry Pi. |
| Arduino needs less current as compared to Raspberry Pi so you can power Arduino from the USB port of a Computer or also with a battery. It has USB type B port on board. | Raspberry Pi needs more current than Arduino. So, you need to connect a power adapter with the Raspberry Pi. It has a micro USB or type C port on board. |
In the case of the Arduino, if there is any power cut it restarts again without damaging any components. |
In case of power interruption, it may cause damage to the hardware and software of Raspberry Pi. |
| Arduino can be programmed using programming languages C or C++. | Raspberry Pi can be programmed using Python, Scratch, C, C++ etc. |
| The cost of the original Arduino UNO is around $23. | The cost of Raspberry Pi model 3B is around $35, and the latest Raspberry Pi 4 Model B is available at different prices eg. $35 for 2GB RAM and $55 for 4GB RAM. |
To control hardware, the Raspberry Pi has 40 GPIO pins(General Purpose Input Output Pins), by which you can connect input devices like sensors, buttons and output devices like LEDs, motors, LCDs, etc.
About Author:
Omkar Utekar is a Project Guide at Moonpreneur. He is very keen to learn new things mostly related to robotics and coding. He is very talkative person.
Differences between 8085 and 8086 microprocessor
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8085 Microprocessor
8085 Microprocessor is a predecessor of version 8086 Microprocessor, designed by Intel in 1976 with the help of NMOS technology.
It includes a data bus of 8 bits, and 16 bits of the address bus, having a +5V voltage supply, and operates at 3.2 MHz single segment CLK.
It has an internal clock generator and functions on a clock cycle having a duty cycle of 50%. 246 total operational codes and 80 instructions are present in the 8085 Microprocessor.
8086 Microprocessor
8086 Microprocessor is an advanced version of the 8085 Microprocessor, designed by Intel in 1976. The number 8086 denotes the IC number of this microprocessor. It is a 16-bit microprocessor. It has 16 bits of the data bus, which is why it can read or write either 16 bits or 8 bits of data at a time. It has 20 bits of address lines that can access 220 address locations.
It works in 2 modes-
- Maximum mode
- Minimum mode
It can only perform fixed-point arithmetic instructions and not floating-point operations.
In the changing world of technologies, the devices used are also changing. Let us take a look at the changes between the 8085 series of microprocessors and the 8086 series of microprocessors.
| 8085 microprocessor | 8086 microprocessor |
|---|---|
| The data bus is 8 bits. | The data bus is 16 bits. |
| The address bus is 16 bits. | The address bus is 20 bits. |
| The memory capacity is 64 KB. Also, 8085 Can Perform Operation Up to 28 i.e. 256 numbers. A number greater than this is to be taken multiple times in an 8-bit data bus. | The memory capacity is 1 MB. Also, 8086 Can Perform operations up to 216 i.e. 65,536 numbers. |
| The input/output port addresses are 8 bits. | The input/output port addresses are 16 bits. |
| The operating frequency is 3.2 MHz. | The operating frequency is 5 MHz, 8 MHz, and 10 MHz. |
| 8085 MP has a Single Mode Of Operation. | 8086 MP has Two Modes Of Operation. 1. Minimum Mode = Single CPU PROCESSOR 2. Maximum Mode = Multiple CPU PROCESSOR. |
It does not have multiplication and division instructions. |
It has multiplication and division instructions. |
| It does not support pipelining. | It supports pipe-lining as it has two independent units Execution Unit (EU) and Bus Interface Unit (BIU). |
| It does not support an instruction queue. | It supports an instruction queue. |
| Memory space is not segmented. | Memory space is segmented. |
| It consists of 5 flags(Sign Flag, Zero Flag, Auxiliary Carry Flag, Parity Flag, and Carry Flag). | It consists of 9 flags(Overflow Flag, Direction Flag, Interrupt Flag, Trap Flag, Sign Flag, Zero Flag, Auxiliary Carry Flag, Parity Flag, and Carry Flag). |
| It is a low-cost Microprocessor | It is a comparatively High-cost Microprocessor. |
| There are 5 Addressing Modes. | There are 11 addressing modes. |
| There is no concurrency in Fetching, Decoding, and execution. | There is Concurrency in Fetching, Decoding, and Execution because of the instruction queue. |
| It has almost 6500 transistors. | It has almost 29000 transistors. |
| It is Accumulator based Microprocessor because Accumulator contains major activity in ALU Operations in store and updating calculations. | It is General Purpose Registers(GPR) based microprocessor because there is no specific Accumulator attached to the input of ALU. all GPRs are connected with it via Bus. |
| Integer, Decimal, and Hexadecimal arithmetic is supported | It also supports ASCII Arithmetic over Integer, Decimal, and Hexadecimal. |
| It needed less external hardware. | It needed more external hardware. Because here more than 1 processor works and an additional external processor can also be employed as per requirements. |
| It runs over 50% duty cycle. That means for one instruction cycle clock pulse held high for 50% of the pulse. | It runs over a 33% duty cycle. That means for one instruction cycle clock pulse held high for 33% of the pulse. |
| In the 8085 Microprocessor for immediate addressing modes there are instructions containing “I” in it. e.g. MVI, LXI, etc. | In the 8086 Microprocessor for immediate addressing modes there is no instruction containing “I” in it. In other words, there is no MVI instruction in 8086 for moving/transferring data. Only MOV instruction is sufficient. |
|
In 8085 microprocessor ADD, SUB instructions were carried out in Accumulator by default. It used only 1 register for arithmetic operations because another register is fixed and is an accumulator. Example: ADD C will do [A]<- [A] + [C] |
In the 8086 microprocessor, we can give the source and destination register and according to that addition or any arithmetic operations will be performed. For Example: ADD AX, BX will do [AX] <- [AX] + [BX] |
Related Articles
Modern microprocessors: comparison | PARALLEL.
RU
The following table compares
characteristics of modern microprocessors.
The table is based on data published
on manufacturers’ web servers, as of
as of November 2003. Some data may be incomplete or not entirely accurate.
| Processor | Clock frequency | FLOP* | Data cache | Instruction cache | L2 cache nine0010 | System bus frequency | SPECint ** | SPECfp** | Watt *** |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Intel Pentium 4 | 1.3-3.2GHz | 2 | 8 KB | 12 KB | 256-512 KB per chip | 400-800 MHz | 1620 | 1494 | 82 W |
| Intel Itanium | 733, 800 MHz | 4 | 16 KB | 16 KB | 96 KB | 266 MHz | 365 | 701 | 116-130W |
| AMD Athlon XP | 1. 333-2.2GHz
|
3 | 64 KB | 64 KB | 512 KB on chip | 400 MHz | 1080 | 982 | 60-68W |
| AMD Athlon MP | 0.85-2.133 GHz | 3 | 64 KB | 64 KB | 256 KB on chip | 266 MHz | 781 | 656 | 46.1-54.7W |
| Sun UltraSPARC III | 600-1200 MHz | 2 | 64 KB | 32 KB | up to 16 MB external, controller and tags on chip | 150 MHz | 722 | 1118 | 70 W @ 750 MHz |
| IBM PowerPC 750FX | 0.9-1GHz | 1 | 32 KB | 32 KB | 512 KB on chip | 200 MHz nine0010 | 5.7 W @ 900 MHz | ||
| SandCraft SR71000 | 500-800 MHz | 2 | 32 KB | 32 KB | 512 KB on chip | 133 MHz | 4 W @ 600 MHz | ||
| Alpha 21264 | 0. 5-1 GHz
|
2 | 64 KB | 64 KB | up to 8 MB | 200 MHz | 679 | 960 nine0010 | 90 W @ 750 MHz |
| IBM Power 4 | 1.1-1.3GHz | 4 | 32 KB | 64 KB | 0.5 to 16 MB | 400 MHz | 814 | 1169 | |
| HP PA-8700 | 650, 750 MHz | 4 | 0.75 MB | 1.5 MB | no | 569 | 581 | 12.5W | |
| SPARC64GP nine0008 | 400-675 MHz | 2 | 128 KB | 128 KB | 8 MB external | 478 | 509 | ||
| AMD Opteron | 1.4-2 GHz | 2 | 64 KB | 64 KB | 1 MB | 1335 | 1339 | 84.7 W | |
| Intel Xeon | 1.4-2 GHz | 8 KB | 20 KB | 1 MB | 400-533 MHz | 1243 | 1152 | 110 W | |
| Intel Itanium 2 | 1. 3-1.5GHz
|
4 | 32 KB — common for data and commands | 256 KB | 400 MHz | 1322 | 2119 |   | |
| Alpha 21364 | 1.15-1.77GHz | 4 | 64 KB | 64 KB | 1.75 MB | 877 | 1482 | 155 W | |
| Crusoe | 667-1000 MHz | 64 KB | 64 KB | 512 KB | 7.5 W | ||||
| Intel Pentium M | 900-1700 MHz | 64 KB | 64 KB | 1 MB | 400 MHz | 22 W | |||
* FLOP = floating point operations per clock.
** Best SPECint2000 and SPECfp2000 benchmark results for single processor configurations. The results were taken from the server www.spec.org
*** Maximum power consumption.
© Laboratory of Parallel Information Technologies, Research and Development Center of Moscow State University
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