A microprocessor is a programmable electronics chip that has computing and decision making capabilities similar to central processing unit of a computer. Any microprocessor- based systems having limited number of resources are called microcomputers. Nowadays, microprocessor can be seen in almost all types of electronics devices like mobile phones, printers, washing machines etc.

                                             Fig.1 Microprocessor-based system

• Address Bus: It carries the address, which is a unique binary pattern used to identify a memory location or an I/O port. For example, an eight bit address bus has eight lines and thus it can address 2⁸ = 256 different locations. The locations in hexadecimal format can be written as 00H – FFH.
• Data Bus: The data bus is used to transfer data between memory and processor or between I/O device and processor. For example, an 8-bit processor will generally have an 8-bit data bus and a 16-bit processor will have 16-bit data bus.
• Control Bus: The control bus carry control signals, which consists of signals for selection of memory or I/O device from the given address, direction of data transfer and synchronization of data transfer in case of slow devices.

A typical microprocessor consists of arithmetic and logic unit (ALU) in association with control unit to process the instruction execution. Almost all the microprocessors are based on the principle of store-program concept. In store-program concept, programs or instructions are sequentially stored in the memory locations that are to be executed. To do any task using a microprocessor, it is to be programmed by the user. So the programmer must have idea about its internal resources, features and supported instructions. Each microprocessor has a set of instructions, a list which is provided by the microprocessor manufacturer. The instruction set of a microprocessor is provided in two forms: binary machine code and mnemonics.

Microprocessor communicates and operates in binary numbers 0 and 1. The set of instructions in the form of binary patterns is called a machine language and it is difficult for us to understand. Therefore, the binary patterns are given abbreviated names, called mnemonics, which forms the assembly language. The conversion of assembly-level language into binary machine-level language is done by using an application called assembler.

Evolution of Microprocessors 4-bit Microprocessors

The first microprocessor was introduced in 1971 by Intel Corp. It was named Intel 4004 as it was a 4 bit processor. It was a processor on a single chip. It could perform simple arithmetic and logic operations such as addition, subtraction, boolean AND and boolean OR. It had a control unit capable of performing control functions like fetching an instruction from memory, decoding it, and generating control pulses to execute it. It was able to operate on 4 bits of data at a time. This first microprocessor was quite a success in industry. Soon other microprocessors were also introduced. Intel introduced the enhanced version of 4004, the 4040.

8-bit Microprocessors

The first 8 bit microprocessor which could perform arithmetic and logic operations on 8 bit words was introduced in 1973 again by Intel. This was Intel 8008 and was later followed by an improved version, Intel 8088. Some other 8 bit processors are Zilog-80 and Motorola M6800.

16-bit Microprocessors

The 8-bit processors were followed by 16 bit processors. They are Intel 8086 and 80286.

32-bit Microprocessors

The 32 bit microprocessors were introduced by several companies but the most popular one is Intel 80386.

Pentium Series

Instead of 80586, Intel came out with a new processor namely Pentium processor. Its performance is closer to RISC performance. Pentium was followed by Pentium Pro CPU. Pentium Pro allows multiple CPUs in a single system in order to achieve multiprocessing. The MMX extension was added to Pentium Pro and the result was Pentiuum II.

The Pentium III provided high performance floating point operations for certain types of computations by using the SIMD extensions to the instruction set. These new instructions makes the Pentium III faster than high-end RISC CPUs.