## Microprocessors Lecture 1

### From Random Logic To Microprocessors

### 1. INTRODUCTION

Digital computers are found in all walks of life, from the home to the office and in industry. Many of these are used for purely computational tasks such as handling accounts, stock control and word-processing. But another important use of digital computers is in control systems and automatic machinery.

At first, large scale calculations and data processing were carried out on "main-frame computers" - large, room-sized machines requiring special rooms with air-conditioning. These tasks continue to be performed in this way with perhaps one computer serving a variety of needs within the one business. But main-frame computers were soon followed by "minicomputers", the size of a large filing cabinet, and which had slightly less computing power and data storage than main-frames, but were much cheaper and could be operated in ordinary rooms. In this way, small businesses could operate their own computer, and larger firms could have several minicomputers operating in different departments. The advent of the microprocessor in 1971 soon led to the construction of "microcomputers" which are small, desk-top personal computers. At first, their computing power was modest, but today advanced microprocessors offer the power of a mainframe in a personal computer. This is the main area of application for general-purpose microprocessors today.

Before computers were widely available, automatic control of machines was achieved using logic circuitry of the TTL family and its predecessors. Sequential operations were implemented using flip-flops and counters. Process conditions were detected using combinational logic. The overall process was described in hardware and was not easy to change. It was the introduction of the minicomputer that allowed machines and industrial processes to become computer controlled. Before this, it was impracticable for a mainframe computer to be used in this way.

In 1971, an electronics engineer realised that the functions of the device for which he was designing logic hardware could be described in terms of a computer program. It occurred to him that logic could be designed so that the circuit sequences were stored as a program. Although extra circuitry was required for this approach, the result was a general purpose processing board which could be used in other applications. This board was marketed as a microcomputer. The circuit was further developed and incorporated into a chip set which became known as a microprocessor. This usage, where the microprocessor is used as a logic replacement, is the second main area of microprocessor applications.

### 2. FUNDAMENTALS

In this section, the building blocks which are found in all microprocessor systems described.

These are: the Arithmetic and Logic Unit (ALU), registers and buses.

### 2.1 ALU

The ALU comprises circuitry to perform arithmetic and logical operations, such a ADD, SUBTRACT, AND, OR, SHIFT. We may understand its construction an operation by taking some examples of logical and arithmetic operations. A simple logic gate is shown below.

A and B are binary digits, and so is X - these are called bits. In a microprocessor, it is normal to deal with bytes (8 bits) rather than individual bits so the ALU equivalent to perform a byte-wide AND is

A0 to A7 comprise byte 1 and B0 to B7, byte 2. X0 to X7 is the result, again one byte. In this bitwise-AND operation, the circuitry for each bit is independent. These bits not always independent as we can see in the following example. Consider the circuit for an adder.

A and B are 1-bit inputs and SUM is the 1-bit output. CARRYin and CARRYout allow full adder stages to be cascaded as shown.

This is more commonly represented in the diagram below.

### 2.2. REGISTERS

In practice, one of the input operands, byte 1, will be stored in a special register called an ACCUMULATOR so that the result of one addition can be carried forward to the next.

Definition:

            A register is a temporary (internal) storage element.  This will typically hold a

            8 or 16 bit operand.

Redrawing the diagram once more, we can see how multiple bytes of data can be added together. The sequencing circuitry is not shown.

Here, the result is stored in the accumulator, overwriting any previous data. It derives its name from this accumulating action.

The following sequence will add together two 8-bit numbers.

    	1) Load accumulator with operand A

    	2) Fetch data operand B

    	3) Add A and B in the adder, put the result in the accumulator.

Each step in the sequence will take a few microseconds to execute. Instead of just adding numbers or performing AND operations, we require the ALU to do a variety of operations in any sequence. Thus, in addition to the data inputs to the ALU, there are other programming or function select inputs.

Such circuitry is not very complex. An example of such an ALU is found in the 74 series logic family. For example, the 74HC181, is a 4 + 4 bit ALU with 32 programmable functions.

In order to make this ALU into a processor, a means must be provided for presenting the data words at the inputs, storing the output word and applying the appropriate function code at the select inputs for each instruction. Such hardware is incorporated into a microprocessor and the logical sequences for each instruction need not be known by the programmer.

## GENERAL MICROPROCESSOR MODEL

A typical microprocessor model for an 8-bit microprocessor is shown below-

### Definition:

            An 8-bit microprocessor is designed to operate with 8-bit operands

    	predominantly.  This does not preclude it dealing with 16 or 32 bit

    	numbers, or more, but it will handle these larger words in 8-bit chunks.

### 2.3 BUSES

The registers and ALU are not permanently connected together, but are joined by a DATA BUS. This bus allows data to be passed from a register to the ALU at one instant and from the ALU to a register at another instant. More generally, any device which needs to read or write data will be connected to the data bus. The timing and control circuitry ensures that only one pair of devices is using the data bus at any time (one writing data and the other reading it).

### Definition:

            A bus is a parallel set of wires (metallisation or conductive silicon internally to

            a chip) which carries information.

Rather than each device having a private connection to every other device in the system, which would be expensive and require many interconnecting paths; all devices share the same set of wires. Usage of the bus is time multiplexed.

In addition to the 8-bit data bus, there is a 16-bit address bus. Access to these busses is governed by control signals.

The amount of data storage provided internally in the microprocessor is limited. Only a few operands can be stored in the internal registers. If the required program steps were to be stored internally in registers, this would place an unacceptable limit on the size of program allowed.

So some means of extending the available storage is provided. External storage ele- ments, or memory, can be read or written to using an extension of the internal data bus. Buffers are provided to interface with external memory chips over an external data bus. These memory chips allow program instructions to be stored, which can be read into the microprocessor at the appropriate time. Results of calculations and data to be input to the ALU can also be stored in this external memory. The arrows on the diagram show that the data bus is bidirectional, that is, data must be able to pass to and from external memory as the microprocessor writes or reads it. Clearly, a control signal is provided to indicate in which direction the data is travelling. This line is called READ/NOT-WRITE or R/W for short. When HIGH, a memory read operation is taking place; when LOW, a memory write (ie. the microprocessor is transferring data to external memory).

Since there will be a large number of external memory locations, we need to specify which one is to be used for transferring data to or from the microprocessor. This is achieved by the address bus. The address bus carries a 16-bit code which uniquely identifies the external memory location we require. Each memory location will only respond to its own code (called its address) and, according to the setting of the R/W line, will take data from the data bus or place data on the data bus. The address bus is unidirectional since it only makes sense for the microprocessor to generate addresses as it is the system controller.

The address bus of 8-bit microprocessors is usually 16-bits wide which allows us to access up to 65536 external bytes of data. As a shorthand, 1024 bytes is called lk bytes; thus 65536 equals 64k bytes.

### 3. SUMMARY

The ALU performs arithmetic and logical operations.

Accumulators are a special class of register which are closely connected with the ALU such that arithmetic and logical operations can be easily performed on their contents.

Registers are storage elements, some of which have specific functions owing to the way in which they are implemented in hardware or the task they have to perform.

In order that transfers of data occur in an orderly manner, Timing and Control circuits coordinate all such operations. It takes tens of nanoseconds for the ALU to process data or for data to be transferred to or from a register. The timing circuit takes this into account.

Address and Data Busses exist to transfer data both internally and externally to the microprocessor.

Having introduced the basic microprocessor hardware configuration, we can now look at how a microprocessor is programmed.

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