Development History of Single Chip Microcomputer

Microcontrollers were born in 1971. They went through three stages: SCM, MCU and SoC. Early SCM microcontrollers were 8 or 4 bits. The most successful one is the 8051 of INTEL. Since then, a series of MCS51 MCU systems have been developed on 8051. The single-chip computer system based on this system is still widely used up to now. With the improvement of the requirements in the field of industrial control, 16-bit single-chip computer has appeared, but it has not been widely used because of the unsatisfactory performance-price ratio. After the 1990s, with the development of consumer electronics products, the technology of single-chip computer has been greatly improved. With the wide application of INTEL i960 series, especially the later ARM series, 32-bit single-chip microprocessors quickly replaced 16-bit single-chip microprocessors and entered the mainstream market.



The performance of the traditional 8-bit single-chip computer has also been improved rapidly, and the processing capacity has increased hundreds of times compared with the 1980s. The main frequency of high-end 32-bit Soc microcontroller has exceeded 300 MHz, and its performance is directly in line with that of the special processor in the mid-1990s, while the price of the ordinary model has dropped to $1, and the top model is only $10.

Contemporary single-chip computer system is no longer only developed and used in bare environment, a large number of dedicated embedded operating systems are widely used in the whole series of single-chip computers. As the core of handheld computers and mobile phones, high-end MCUs can even directly use dedicated Windows and Linux operating systems.



Early stage < br />
SCM (Single Chip Microcontrollers) stage is mainly to seek the best architecture of embedded system with single chip morphology. Success has laid a completely different development path between SCM and general-purpose computers. Intel has made great contributions to the independent development of embedded systems.



Medium-term development < br />
MCU is the stage of Micro Controller Unit (MCU). The main direction of technology development is to expand various peripheral circuits and interface circuits to meet the requirements of embedded applications and highlight the intelligent control ability of objects. The fields it involves are all related to the object system. Therefore, the responsibility of developing MCU inevitably falls on the electrical and electronic technology manufacturers. From this point of view, the gradual fading out of Intel MCU development also has its objective factors. In the development of MCU, Philips is the most famous manufacturer.

Philips has rapidly developed MCS-51 from a single-chip microcomputer to a microcontroller because of its great advantages in embedded applications. Therefore, when we review the development of embedded systems, we should not forget the historical merits of Intel and Philips.



Current trends < br />
The independent development of SoC embedded system (System on Chip) is an important factor in the development of MCU, which is to seek the maximum solution of application system on chip. Therefore, the development of special-purpose microcontroller naturally forms the trend of SoC. With the development of microelectronics technology, IC design and EDA tools, the design of SCM application system based on SOC will have great development. Therefore, the understanding of MCU can be extended from MCU and MCU to MCU application system.