Microcontroller and microprocessor - important basics you need to know about it! While there are many enthusiasts and tech savvy people who try to get started in the embedded electronics, most of them get overwhelmed and confused on where exactly to start. Some of them even make the mistake of attempting to write their own code without getting their concepts clear on microprocessor or microcontroller that they are working with, programming language, and the basic programming concepts.
If this sounds familiar to you, you are at the right place. Get familiar with micro controller programming and the world of embedded electronics. The following are some of the important general concepts that apply to all the microprocessors or microcontrollers. Are microcontroller and microprocessor different? Before knowing if there are differences between them or not, let us first know what exactly both terms mean. A microcontroller is basically a tiny microcomputer on chip. It has RAM, CPU, program ROM memory, special function registers, data ROM memory, and so forth. It can even have host of on-chip peripherals including ADC (Analog-to-Digital Converter), DAC (Digital-to-Analog Converter), Serial UART, Master Synchronous Serial Port for the SPI communications. On the other hand, a microprocessor is generally everything that a microcontroller is but it doesn’t have program ROM on the chip. It resides off the chip in the separate external EPROM chip.