What is a microprocessor?

Microprocessor

• A microprocessor is a controlling unit of a microcomputer, fabricated on a small chip capable of performing Arithmetic Logical Unit (ALU) operations and communicating with the other devices connected to it.
• It includes the ALU, Register Arrays and control circuits on a single chip
• The microprocessor is a general purpose programmable logic device.
• It is the brain of the computer and it performs all the computational tasks, calculations, data processing etc. inside the computer.
• In the computers, the most popular type of the processor is the Intel Pentium.

Features of Microprocessor

• Low in Cost
• Generates less heat
• High speed
• Consumes low power
• Portable
• Small in size
• Versatile and Reliable

Special Features of Microprocessor

1)8086 is a pipelined processor

•It uses 2 stage pipelining ie Fetch stage that pre-fetches upto 6  bytes of instructions stores them in the queue and Execute  stage that executes these instructions. Pipelining improves the  performance of the processor ie operations are faster.

2)8086 uses memory banks

•It uses a memory banking system ie the entire data is not  stored sequentially in a single memory of 1 MB but the memory  is divided into 2 Banks of 512KB each. The banks are called  Lower Bank (Even Banks) and Higher banks (or odd bank).

3)8086 can operate in 2 modes

•Minimum mode -> A system with only 1 processor ie 8086

•Maximum mode -> A system with 8086 and other processors  like 8087-(Math Co-processor), 8089-(IO processor)or multiple  8086 processors.

4)8086 uses memory segmentation

•A 16 bit address in an instruction or a 16 bit address in a  register can access a memory location although 8086 has 20  address lines. Here the memory is divided into 16 segments of  2^16 = 65536B = 64KB each is used as Code, Stack, Data and Extra segment.