Assessment to cover m5 - Coursework Example

The early microprocessors were usually 4-bits and were used in electronic calculators that used binary coded decimal. The microprocessor consists of three component units. The Arithmetic and logic unit is a digital circuit that performs all the arithmetic operations that include additions, multiplications, subtractions, and divisions, and logic operations which entail comparison operations using logic operators such as AND, OR. The control unit directs and controls the operation of other units by providing timing and control signals, it fetches and decodes machine instructions, and co-ordinates the input and output devices of a computer system.

The registers act as cache memory for the microprocessor and provide the storage of data and instructions to be executed. The CPU is mounted on the motherboard (a printed circuit board that holds components of the system and provide connection to other peripheral devices) of the computer system, where other electronics are also mounted. . The microprocessors are differentiated according to the instruction set executed, the number of bits processed in a single instruction, and the clock speed (instructions executed per second), given in megahertz (MHz).

In both cases, the higher the value, the more powerful the CPU will be in terms of performance. 8-bit microprocessor An 8-bit microprocessor refers to a processor architecture that computes 8-bits as the data size. All the instructions executed by such a processor consist of 8-bits (binary digits). The arithmetic and logic unit, the internal buses, and the data processing registers are 8-bits. An 8-bit CPU can process 8 bits of data simultaneously, and its data bus consists of 8 lines to transfer data between the memory and other input/output devices.

The Intel 8085 is an 8-bit microprocessor that consists of instruction sets such as data moving, arithmetic (addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division), logic (AND, OR, XOR), control transfer (both conditional and unconditional, call subroutine, return from subroutine), setting and clearing flag bits, interrupts, stack operations and input/output instructions. This processor consists of 8-bit ALU that performs arithmetic and logic operations, the control unit, seven 8-bit general purpose registers A,B,C,D,E,H, and L, which are paired to form BC, DE, and HL.

Register A is referred to as the Accumulator and it stores one operand of arithmetic and logic operation, and the results of the arithmetic and logic operations. There are two special purpose registers which are 16-bit registers, namely, the stack pointer (SP, which points to the top of the stack where data can be retrieved),