Memory Organization

  • Logical separation of program and data memory
  • Separate address spaces for Program (ROM) and Data (RAM) Memory

Allow Data Memory to be accessed by 8-bit addresses quickly and manipulated by 8-bit CPU

Program Memory

  • Only be read, not written to
  • The address space is 16-bit, so maximum of 64K bytes
  • Up to 4K bytes can be on-chip (internal) of 8051 core
  • PSEN (Program Store Enable) is used for access to external Program Memory

 Data Memory

  • Includes 128 bytes of on-chip Data Memory which are more easily accessible directly by its instructions
  • There is also a number of Special Function Registers (SFRs)
  • Internal Data Memory contains four banks of eight registers and a special 32- byte long segment which is bit addressable by 8051 bit-instructions
  • External memory of maximum 64K bytes is accessible by “movx”


Interrupt Structure

  • The 8051 provides 4 interrupt sources
  • Two external interrupts
  • Two timer interrupts

Port Structure

  • The 8051 contains four I/O ports
  • All four ports are bidirectional
  • Each port has SFR (Special Function Registers P0 through P3) which works like a latch, an output driver and an input buffer
  • Both output driver and input buffer of Port 0 and output driver of Port 2 are used for accessing external memory
  • Accessing external memory works like this
  • Port 0 outputs the low byte of external memory address (which is timemultiplexed with the byte being written or read)
  • Port 2 outputs the high byte (only needed when the address is 16 bits wide)
  • Port 3 pins are multifunctional
  • The alternate functions are activated with the 1 written in the corresponding bit in the port SFR

Timer/Counter

  • The 8051 has two 16-bit Timer/Counter registers
  • Timer 0
  • Timer 1
  • Both can work either as timers or event counters
  • Both have four different operating modes