What’s the Difference Between a Microprocessor and a Microcontroller?

RE: What’s the Difference Between a Microprocessor and a Microcontroller?

firstmicroprocessor — Sun, 10 May 2020 00:30:32 GMT

There is tremendous disarray between the microcontroller and microchip. Them two have been utilized progressively. They have a few basic highlights and furthermore have some significant contrasts. Both the incorporated circuit's, for instance, firstmicroprocessor and microcontroller can't be remarkable by investigating them. They are reachable in different variants starting from 6-pin to as high as 80-100-pins depending upon the highlights.

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RE: What’s the Difference Between a Microprocessor and a Microcontroller?

zaknet996 — Tue, 01 Oct 2019 16:30:17 GMT

Thanks for this. I have recently presented to my Tech Club at work very similar information, albeit in a different context! I even used the Megaprocessor and MOnSter 6502 as examples too. However, I am not sure quite what a 6052 microprocessor is [View:/resized-image/__size/16x16/__key/commentfiles/f7d226abd59f475c9d224a79e3f0ec07-0eddf9cc-5558-4e87-8b41-fe5eddd1fbfd/8080.contentimage_5F00_53.png:16:16]....

RE: What’s the Difference Between a Microprocessor and a Microcontroller?

Robert Peter Oakes — Wed, 14 Aug 2019 20:22:10 GMT

Here is a couple of links that may show how Microchip and ST Micro look at the differences

http://ww1.microchip.com/downloads/en/DeviceDoc/MCU_vs_MPU_Article.pdf

https://www.st.com/en/microcontrollers-microprocessors.html

RE: What’s the Difference Between a Microprocessor and a Microcontroller?

clem57 — Wed, 14 Aug 2019 09:37:45 GMT

I agree with [mention:2136c4649d3b47f78653b7e97ac61f69:e9ed411860ed4f2ba0265705b8793d05] in so far as time has really melded together the technologies. The one thing is whatever it is called, MCU's seem to always involve interfaces like SPI, I2C, ADC, etc while MPU's tend to rely on support chips to handle interfacing things like PCI-e, USB, etc. But even then he grey areas grow larger.[View:/resized-image/__size/16x16/__key/commentfiles/f7d226abd59f475c9d224a79e3f0ec07-0eddf9cc-5558-4e87-8b41-fe5eddd1fbfd/contentimage_5F00_53.png:16:16]

RE: What’s the Difference Between a Microprocessor and a Microcontroller?

Robert Peter Oakes — Wed, 14 Aug 2019 04:51:39 GMT

I think you are perhaps a little off with your descriptions

Most micro controllers indeed do have rom/ram and flash but nearly always also contain IO like ADC, DAC, GPIO, I2C, etc.

To include a math co-processor is not really a feature of a micro controller but I would not be surprised if there are a few that contain one. but all of that can be found in many micro processors too ?

One of the more distinguished features of an MCU in my opinion would be that its execution is predictable (You know how long certain operations are going to take, often lacking pre fetch and other optimizations found in microprocessors). were as a microprocessor often will be running a multitasking operating system were fine grained timing is almost impossible to predict due to task switching, dynamic priority on tasks, etc etc.

Many of the features you mentions of a micro controller are actually found in many micro processors like a video module, memory management, RAM, IO, in the form of cache, and these days also some level of IO (I2C, Audio, Video, SPI, UARTS etc.) so the distinction of the add in modules / functionality is also becoming blurred but the fact that a micro-processor tends to be much harder to predict actual execution time thereby making it a poor choice for many "Real time" applications (I know... Real Time is a whole other topic)

these days we tend to find micro controllers running lower level applications and with relatively fixed functionality without uploading new firmware, oh and it also tends to be firmware rather than an operating system, micro processors on the other hand tend to run multi tasking operating systems and has applications running under that OS. there is an area that overlaps somewhat with "Real Time patches", RTOS etc that will do a good job of coming close to a micro controller in predictability.

this is why we still find many industrial controllers still running with a distributed architecture even inside the same box. Phoenix Contact 2152 (PLC Next), BrainBox BB-400, Revolution PI Core3 all run a versions of Linux with a "Real Time Fix" for the OS but also still use separate micro-controllers to preform the actual IO under instruction from the multitasking OS

In summary and to keep this relatively short, I guess what I am saying is that, the differences between MCU and MPU these days is not so much about the additional IO it has on board but in the way it uses it and the way its code is executed. Even a SOC is still mainly a MPU just with so many more parts of functionality thrown in to minimize the parts count. Just look at the new Raspberry PI 4 with its superb broadcom chip as an example

RE: What’s the Difference Between a Microprocessor and a Microcontroller?

dougw — Tue, 13 Aug 2019 20:00:35 GMT

I appreciate the differences, but I tend to use the terms interchangeably. I am a bit more careful about calling something a microcontroller, but since a microcontroller has a processor in it, I don't mind calling it a microprocessor. I find that anyone who cares about the difference knows from the context what is being discussed.

The term microprocessor became popular long before the term microcontroller and back then there was no rule that a microprocessor couldn't have memory and higher level I/O functions. The 4-bit chip in an old calculator might be a complete system on a chip, but they were more likely to be called a CPU than a microcontroller. I also still use the term CPU quite often for all types of processing chips.