TABLE OF CONTENTS This chapter surveys microcontrollers other than the PIC18Fxx2 from Microchip and other companies. Advanced interface standards such as the Controller Area Network (CAN) and the Universal Serial Bus (USB) are briefly examined, as well as issues concerning external memory interfacing and multi-master busses.
After reading this chapter, you will be able to:
Discuss the roles of static random access memory (SRAM) and dynamic random access memory (DRAM) in microprocessor systems.
Compare and contrast features of other PICmicro family members with the PIC18Fxx2.
Compare and contrast features of microcontrollers from other semiconductor manufacturers with the PIC18Fxx2.
Compare and contrast features of the Controller Area Network (CAN) and Universal Serial Bus (USB) with serial interface standards used by the PIC18Fxx2.
Discuss bus arbitration for multi-master buses and how bus arbitration is accomplished for CAN and I 2C busses.
Discuss the basic concepts behind real time operating systems.
Our discussion of memory technologies to this point has been limited to the nonvolatile on-chip PIC18Fxx2 Flash program/Data EEPROM memories and off-chip memory using serial Flash EEPROMs. Two other common memory types are Static Random Access Memory (SRAM) and Dynamic Random Access Memory (DRAM). Both types are volatile and have read/write times that are equal, with read/write times ranging from a few nanoseconds to a few 10s of nanoseconds. Note that this is very different from the EEPROM memory covered previously in which write times are in the millisecond range because of its nonvolatile nature. SRAM and...
