Silicon Labs Pipelined 8051 Microcontrollers
The most widely used instruction set for 8-bit microcontrollers (MCUs), the 8051 core has a long history and a tremendous, widely used code base. Silicon Labs’ popular 8051-based MCU portfolio leverages this broad installed base. But these are not your everyday 8051 microcontrollers.
Silicon Labs’ 8-bit MCUs are based on a patented implementation of the 8051 instruction set architecture designed to maximize instruction throughput while retaining complete object code compatibility. The result is a ‘hard wired’ implementation of the 8051 MCU CPU, as opposed to the original micro-coded version. The instruction set is mapped to a basic two-stage pipeline to increase throughput while maintaining an 8-bit program memory width. The result is a high-performance 8051 MCU architecture that executes most instructions within 1 or 2 clock cycles and delivers 20 to 25 times the performance of the original 8051 core. Delivering up to 100 MIPS peak throughput, Silicon Labs’ 8-bit 8051 MCUs can satisfy the performance needs of many embedded applications more economically than costlier 16- or 32-bit MCUs.
To learn more about our 8051 microcontrollers, download these tutorials:
- 8051 Microcontroller Instruction Set — This course examines the 8051 architecture and associated instruction set. Included is a comprehensive look at the addressing modes and instruction operation.
- C8051 Microcontroller Interrupt Architecture — This module provides a basic understanding of interrupts and their operation. It illustrates how the MCU performs asynchronous code execution as a result of internal or external events and highlights the programming requirements to implement interrupts in the MCU.
You may also be interested in microcontroller die sales.
If you wish to learn more about teh programming the Silicon Labs 8051-based MCU product family, see our education resources here: MCUniversity.
