A microcontroller or microcontroller unit (MCU) is a small computer on a single integrated circuit. A microcontroller contains one or more CPUs along with memory and programmable input/output peripherals. Program memory in the form of ferroelectric RAM, NOR flash or OTP ROM is also often included on chip, as well as a small amount of RAM. Microcontrollers are designed for embedded applications, in contrast to the microprocessors used in personal computers or other general purpose applications consisting of various discrete chips.
AVR is a family of microcontrollers developed since 1996 by Atmel, acquired by Microchip Technology in 2016. These are modified Harvard architecture 8-bit RISC single-chip microcontrollers. AVR was one of the first microcontroller families to use on-chip flash memory for program storage, as opposed to one-time programmable ROM, EPROM, or EEPROM used by other microcontrollers at the time.
PIC is a family of microcontrollers made by Microchip Technology, derived from the PIC1650 originally developed by General Instrument's Microelectronics Division. The name PIC initially referred to Peripheral Interface Controller, and is currently expanded as Programmable Intelligent Computer. The first parts of the family were available in 1976; by 2013 the company had shipped more than twelve billion individual parts, used in a wide variety of embedded systems.
The MSP430 is a mixed-signal microcontroller family from Texas Instruments, first introduced on 14 February 1992. Built around a 16-bit CPU, the MSP430 was designed for use with low power consumption embedded applications and for low cost.
The PIC16C84, PIC16F84 and PIC16F84A are 8-bit microcontrollers of which the PIC16C84 was the first introduced in 1993 and hailed as the first PIC microcontroller to feature a serial programming algorithm and EEPROM memory. It is a member of the PIC family of controllers, produced by Microchip Technology. The memory architecture makes use of bank switching. Software tools for assembler, debug and programming were only available for the Microsoft Windows operating system.
Nucleus RTOS is a real-time operating system (RTOS) produced by the Embedded Software Division of Mentor Graphics, a Siemens Business, supporting 32- and 64-bit embedded system platforms. The operating system (OS) is designed for real-time embedded systems for medical, industrial, consumer, aerospace, and Internet of things (IoT) uses. Nucleus was released first in 1993. The latest version is 3.x, and includes features such as power management, process model, 64-bit support, safety certification, and support for heterogeneous computing multi-core system on a chip (SOCs) processors.
FreeRTOS is a real-time operating system kernel for embedded devices that has been ported to 35 microcontroller platforms. It is distributed under the MIT License.
AVR32 is a 32-bit RISC microcontroller architecture produced by Atmel. The microcontroller architecture was designed by a handful of people educated at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, including lead designer Øyvind Strøm and CPU architect Erik Renno in Atmel's Norwegian design center.
Microchip Technology Incorporated is a publicly listed American corporation that manufactures microcontroller, mixed-signal, analog, and Flash-IP integrated circuits. Its products include microcontrollers, Serial EEPROM devices, Serial SRAM devices, embedded security devices, radio frequency (RF) devices, thermal, power and battery management analog devices, as well as linear, interface and wireless products.
The Small Device C Compiler (SDCC) is a free-software, partially retargetable C compiler for 8-bit microcontrollers. It is distributed under the GNU General Public License. The package also contains an assembler, linker, simulator and debugger. As of March 2007, SDCC is the only open-source C compiler for Intel 8051-compatible microcontrollers. In 2011 the compiler was downloaded on average more than 200 times per day.
Segger Microcontroller, founded in 1992, is a private company involved in the embedded systems industry. It provides products used to develop and manufacture four categories of embedded systems: real-time operating systems (RTOS) and software libraries (middleware), debugging and trace probes, programming tools, and in-system programmers. The company is headquartered in Monheim am Rhein, Germany, with remote offices in Gardner, Massachusetts; Milpitas, California; and Shanghai, China.
PICkit is a family of programmers for PIC microcontrollers made by Microchip Technology. They are used to program and debug microcontrollers, as well as program EEPROM. Some models also feature logic analyzers and serial communications (UART) tools.
The Bus Pirate is a universal bus interface device designed for programming, debugging, and analyzing microcontrollers and other ICs. It was developed as an open-source hardware and software project.
ERIKA Enterprise is a real-time operating system (RTOS) kernel for embedded systems, which is OSEK/VDX certified. It is free and open source software released under a GNU General Public License (GPL). The RTOS also includes RT-Druid, an integrated development environment (IDE) based on Eclipse.
MikroElektronika is a Serbian manufacturer and retailer of hardware and software tools for developing embedded systems. The company headquarters is in Belgrade, Serbia.
debugWIRE is a serial communications protocol, designed by Atmel. It is used for on-chip debugging of AVR microcontrollers.
DAVE (Infineon) Digital Application Virtual Engineer (DAVE) is a software development and code generation tool for microcontroller applications created in C/C++. DAVE is a standalone system with automatic code generation modules. It is suited for the development of software drivers for Infineon microcontrollers and aids the developer with automatically created C-level templates and user-desired functionalities.
The MPLAB series of devices are programmers and debuggers for Microchip PIC and dsPIC microcontrollers, developed by Microchip Technology.
