What can I do when logged in?

You can submit new articles, so we can make unique versions of them and distribute them for you.
If you want to simply publish the same article on 800 websites, you can tell us to do that.
You can see the archive and current status of all your article distributions.
You can order any number of high-quality articles - just let us know your keywords.
You can browse the archive of all the articles we have written for you.
You can order our Complete Service (10 high-quality articles plus 10 article distributions).
You can purchase more credits for our services and check your affiliate earnings.
Much more ...

SpinDistribute.com Article Directory

The following article was published in our article directory on November 11, 2009.
Learn more about SpinDistribute Article Distribution System.

Programming 8051 Microcontrollers

Article Category: Computers and Technology

The majority of computer systems in use today are embedded in other machinery, such as vehicles, mobile devices, appliances, and almost all peripherals for computer systems. These computer systems are called embedded systems. An embedded system is a special-purpose computer system designed to perform one or a few specialized functions, often with real-time processing. It is usually embedded as part of a complete device including hardware and mechanical parts. In contrast, a general-purpose computer, such as a personal computer, can do many different tasks depending on programming. Embedded systems control many of common devices in use today.

While some embedded systems are very complex, many have minimal requirements for memory and program length, with no operating system, and low software complexity. Typical input and output devices include cameras, relays, solenoids, LEDs, small or custom LCD displays, RF devices, and sensors for data such as temperature, humidity, light level etc. Embedded systems usually have no keyboard, large screen, disks, printers, or other recognizable I/O devices of a PC, and may lack human interaction devices of any kind.

A key part in many embedded systems is a microcontroller. A microcontroller (also MCU or uC) is a functional computer system-on-a-chip (SoC). It contains a processor core, memory, and programmable IO peripherals. Microcontrollers include an integrated CPU, memory (a small amount of RAM, nonvolatile program memory, or both) and peripherals capable of input and output. Microcontrollers are used in automatically controlled products and devices, such as car engine control systems, remote controls, office machines, appliances, mobile phones, and toys. By reducing the size, cost, and power consumption compared to a design using a separate microprocessor, memory, and IO devices, microcontrollers make it economical to electronically control many more processes. One of the still very popular 8-bit microcontrollers is Intel 8051.

The 8051 microcontroller is a Harvard architecture, single chip microcontroller which was developed by Intel in 1980 for use in embedded systems. Intel's original versions were widely used in the 1980s and early 1990s, but has today largely been superseded by a vast range of faster and functionally enhanced 8051-compatible devices manufactured by more than 25 independent manufacturers including Atmel, Infineon Technologies (formerly Siemens AG), Maxim Integrated Products (via its Dallas Semiconductor subsidiary), NXP (formerly Philips Semiconductor), Nuvoton (formerly Winbond), ST Microelectronics, Silicon Laboratories (formerly Cygnal), Texas Instruments and Cypress Semiconductor. Intel's official designation for the 8051 family of microcontrollers is MCS-51.

Several C compilers are available for the 8051 family, most of which feature extensions that allow the programmer to specify where each variable should be stored in its six types of memory, and provide access to 8051 specific hardware features such as the multiple register banks and bit manipulation instructions. Other high level programming languages such as Pascal, BASIC, Forth, PL/M and Modula 2 are available for the 8051 family, but they are less widely used than C and assembly language. In embedded world C is almost a standard for programming language. There are many debates on which language is better, in particular between C and Pascal programmers. There is no clear winner.

C is a general, block structured, procedural, cross-platform, imperative computer programming language developed in 1972 by Dennis Ritchie at the Bell Telephone Laboratories for use with the Unix operating system. Although C was designed for implementing operating systems and system software, it is also widely used for developing application software. It is widely used on many different software platforms and computer architectures, and several standard compilers exist. C has greatly influenced many other popular programming languages, most in particular C++, which originally began as an extension to C .

Pascal is an influential, imperative and procedural programming language, designed by Niklaus Wirth in late 1960s as a compact and efficient language intended to teach good programming practices using so-called structured programming and data structuring. A derivative known as Object Pascal was designed for object oriented programming.

Until recently there was no reliable and efficient Pascal compiler for the 8051 family of microcontrollers. Now this has changed. There is Turbo51, a free Pascal compiler for the 8051 family of microcontrollers. If you like Pascal programming language and yoy are working with 8051 microcontrollers then you will find Turbo51 an excellent tool.

Turbo51 is a Win32 command line optimizing compiler with Borland Turbo Pascal 7 syntax. It has full floating point support, you can mix Pascal and assembly language using all register banks. Advanced code generator and smart linker generate compact code in many formats: binary (.bin), Intel HEX (.hex), OMF-51 (.omf), assembler source code (.asm). Source-level debugging is also possible with extended object (OMF) file.

One of the most important strengths of Turbo51 are optimizations to generate compact code. Turbo51 uses the following compiler optimizations: constant folding, dead code elimination, branch elimination, integer arithmetic optimizations, loop-invariant code motion, code-block reordering, loop inversion, induction variable elimination, instruction combining, instruction selection, register allocation, common sub-expression elimination, peephole optimizations and many more.

Turbo51 is released as a freeware. You can download it and use it for hobby projects or serious work. On the Turbo51 web page you will find documentation and code examples that show the syntax, features and generated files. This should be enough to start a 8051 project development with Turbo51. And if you are still missing something or have a problem you can always ask author for help.

If you are already familiar with the 8051 instructions you can start with Turbo51 as 8051 assembly language compiler and then add some Pascal statements until you become familiar with Turbo51 and Pascal syntax. A good approach is also to compile some Pascal code and then check ASM file. This way you can learn 8051 instructions, get some ideas on how to write effective code and become familiar with the compiler. Turbo51, like many popular C compilers for 8051, generates optimized code and supports source-level debugging with OMF object file.

With Turbo51 you have a choice. You can choose between many C compilers and Turbo51 - a free Pascal compiler for 8051 microcontrollers.

Keywords: 8051, compiler, pascal, microcontroller, embedded, assembler, debugging, programming

Learn more about SpinDistribute Article Distribution System. We also offer Professional Article Writing to everyone who's looking for high quality web content.

SpinDistribute.com Network

Each article you submit at SpinDistribute.com is sent through our innovative Article Distribution System to our network of more than 1840 publishers - about 55% of them are high-quality article directories, 30% of them are niche blogs and 15% of them are other content-rich websites.

To achieve the best possible success we only publish your article to most related websites. This means your article will show up on approximately 640 - 880 most related websites which will give you great SEO results.

We also offer a separate Professional Article Writing Service to everyone who's looking for high quality web content and well researched unique articles.