8051

The 8051 is a single chip microcontroller developed by Intel

in 1980. A microcontroller is a computer on a single IC
containing CPU, Memory, I/O. 8051 is primarily used in
Embedded Systems.

Key Features:
- 8-bit ALU and Accumulator, 8-bit Registers (one 16bitregister with special move instructions), 8-bit data bus
and 216-bit address bus/program counter/data pointer
and related 8/11/16-bit operations; hence it is mainly an
8-bitmicrocontroller
- Boolean processor with 17 instructions, 1-bit
accumulator, 32 registers (4 bit-addressable 8-bit) and
up to 144 special 1 bit-addressable RAM variables (18
bit-addressable 8-bit)
- Multiply, divide and compare instructions
- 4 fast switchable register banks with 8 registers each
(memory mapped)
- Fast interrupt with optional register bank switching
- Interrupts and threads with selectable priority
- Dual 16-bit address bus It can access 2 x 216 memory
locations 64 KB (65,536 locations) each of RAM and
ROM
- 128 bytes of on-chip RAM (IRAM)
- 4 KB of on-chip ROM, with a 16-bit (64 KB) address space
(PMEM). Not included on 803X variants
- Four 8-bit bi-directional input/output port
- UART (serial port)
- Two 16-bit Counter/timers
- Power saving mode (on some derivatives)

Memory: Microcontroller requires a program which is a

collection of instructions. This program tells Microcontroller to
do specific tasks. These programs require a memory on which
these can be saved and read by Microcontroller to perform
specific operation. The memory which is used to store the
program of Microcontroller is known as code memory or
Program memory.
Microcontroller also requires a memory to store
data or operands temporarily. The memory which is used to
temporarily store data for operation is known as Data
Memory and we uses 'RAM'(Random Access Memory) for this
purpose. Microcontroller 8051 has 4K of Code Memory or

Program memory that is it has 4KB Rom and it also have 128
bytes of data memory i.e. RAM.

Bus: Basically Bus is a collection of wires which work as a

communication channel or medium for transfer of Data.
These buses consist of 8, 16 or more wires. Thus these can
carry 8 bits, 16 bits simultaneously. Buses are of two types
Buses:

Address Bus

Data Bus

Address Bus: Microcontroller 8051 has a 16 bit address bus. It

used to address memory locations. It is used to transfer the
address from CPU to Memory.
Data Bus: Microcontroller 8051 has 8 bits data bus. It is used
to carry data.

Oscillator: Microcontroller is a digital circuit device, therefore

it requires clock for its operation. For this purpose,
Microcontroller 8051 has an on-chip oscillator which works as
a clock source for Central Processing Unit. As the output
pulses of oscillator are stable therefore it enables
synchronized work of all parts of 8051 Microcontroller.

Input/output Port: Microcontroller is used in embedded

systems to control the operation of machines. Therefore to
connect it to other machines, devices or peripherals we

require I/O interfacing ports in Microcontroller. For this

purpose Microcontroller 8051 has 4 input output ports to
connect it to other peripherals.

Timers/Counters: Microcontroller 8051 has 2 16 bit timers and

counters. The counters are divided into 8 bit registers. The
timers are used for measurement of intervals, to determine
pulse width etc

Memory:

The MCS-51 has four distinct types of memory internal RAM,

special function registers, program memory, and external
data memory.
Internal RAM (IRAM) is located from address 0 to address
0xFF. IRAM from 0x00 to 0x7F can be accessed directly. IRAM
from 0x80 to 0xFF must be accessed indirectly, using the
@R0 or @R1 syntax, with the address to access loaded in R0
or R1. The 128 bits at IRAM locations 0x200x2F are bitaddressable.
Special function registers (SFR) are located in the same
address space as IRAM, at addresses 0x80 to 0xFF, and are
accessed directly using the same instructions as for the lower

half of IRAM. They cannot be accessed indirectly via @R0 or

@R1. 16 of the SFRs are also bit-addressable.
Program memory (PMEM, though less common in usage than
IRAM and XRAM) is up to 64 KB of read-only memory, starting
at address 0 in a separate address space. It may be on- or
off-chip, depending on the particular model of chip being
used. Program memory is read-only, though some variants of
the 8051 use on-chip flash memory and provide a method of
re-programming the memory in-system or in-application. In
addition to code, it is possible to store read-only data in
program memory, accessed by the MOVC A, @DPTR
instruction. Data is fetched from the address specified in the
16-bit special function register DPTR.
External data memory (XRAM) is a third address space, also
starting at address 0. It can also be on or off-chip; what
makes it "external" is that it must be accessed using the
MOVX (Move external) instruction. Many variants of the 8051
include the standard 256 bytes of IRAM plus a few KB of
XRAM on the chip.

The 8051 is designed as a strict Harvard architecture. The

8051 can only execute code fetched from program memory.
The 8051 does not have any instruction to write to program
memory. Most 8051 systems respect this distinction, and so
are unable to download and directly execute new programs.
The strict Harvard architecture has the advantage of making
such systems immune to most forms of malware. Some 8051
systems have (or can be modified to have) some "dualmapped" RAM, making them act somewhat more like
Princeton architecture. This (partial) Princeton architecture

has the advantage of making it possible for a Forth boot

loader running on the 8051 to write new native code to RAM
and then execute it, leading to faster incremental and
interactive programming cycles than strict Harvard systems.

Registers:

The only register on an 8051 that is not memory-mapped is

the 16-bit program counter PC. This specifies the address of
the next instruction to execute. Relative branch instructions
supply an 8-bit signed offset which is added to the PC.
8 general-purpose registers R0R7 may be accessed with
instructions 1 byte shorter than others. They are mapped to
IRAM between 0x00 and 0x1F. Only 8 bytes of that range are

used at any given time, determined by the two bank select

bits in the PSW.
The following registers are memory-mapped into the special
function register space:
(0x81) Stack pointer SP: This is an 8-bit register used by
subroutine call and return instructions. The stack grows
upward; the SP is incremented before pushing and
decremented after popping a value.
(0x8283) Data pointer DP: This is a 16-bit register that is
used for accessing PMEM and XRAM.
(0xD0) Program status word PSW. This contains important
status flags:
PSW.0: P Parity: Gives the parity (modulo-2 sum of the bits
of) the most recent ALU result.
PSW.1: UD User Defined: For general software use, not
otherwise used by hardware.
PSW.2: OV Overflow flag. Set when addition produces a
signed overflow.
PSW.3: RS0 Register select 0. The low-order bit of the
register bank. Set when banks at 0x08 or 0x18 are in use.
PSW.4: RS1 Register select 1. The high-order bit of the
register bank. Set when banks at 0x10 or 0x18 are in use.
PSW.5: F0 Flag 0: For general software use, not otherwise
used by hardware.
PSW.6: AC auxiliary carry. Set when addition produces a
carry from bit 3 to bit 4.

PSW.7: C Carry bit.

(0xE0) Accumulator A: This register is used by most
instructions.
(0xF0) B register: This is used as an extension to the
accumulator for multiply and divide instructions.
256 single bits are directly addressable. These are the 16
IRAM locations from 0x200x2F, and the 16 special function
registers 0x80, 0x88, 0x90 0xF8. Any bit of these bytes
may be directly accessed by a variety of logical operations
and conditional branches.
Note that the PSW does not contain the common N (negative)
and Z (zero) flags. Instead, because the accumulator is a bitaddressable SFR, it is possible to branch on its most
significant bit directly. There is also an instruction to jump if
the accumulator is zero or non-zero.