THE 8051 MICROCONTROLLER

ARCHITECTURE, PROGRAMMING AND

APPLICATIONS
BY
K.HARINATH REDDY
ASSISTANT PROFESSOR
DEPARTMENT OF EEE
AITS, RAJAMPET

Saturday, November 7,
2020
 Contents:

Introduction
8051 Architecture
Addressing Modes
Timers

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2020
• An example for CISC Processor.
• Harvard Architecture
• Collection of 8 and 16 bit registers and 8
bit memory locations.
• External Memory can be interfaced.

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2020
 Pin Description of the 8051
P1.0 1 40 Vcc
P1.1 2 39 P0.0(AD0)
P1.2 3 38 P0.1(AD1)
P1.3
P1.4
4
5
8051 37
36
P0.2(AD2)
P0.3(AD3)
P1.5 6 35 P0.4(AD4)
P1.6 7 34 P0.5(AD5)
P1.7 8 33 P0.6(AD6)
RST 9 32 P0.7(AD7)
(RXD)P3.0 10 31 EA/VPP
(TXD)P3.1 11 30 ALE/PROG
(INT0)P3.2 12 29 PSEN
(INT1)P3.3 13 28 P2.7(A15)
(T0)P3.4 14 27 P2.6(A14)
(T1)P3.5 15 26 P2.5(A13)
(WR)P3.6 16 25 P2.4(A12)
(RD)P3.7 17 24 P2.3(A11)
XTAL2 18 23 P2.2(A10)
XTAL1 19 22 P2.1(A9)
GND 20 21 P2.0(A8) 

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 Pins of 8051（1/4）

• Vcc（pin 40）：
– Vcc provides supply voltage to the chip.
– The voltage source is +5V.
• GND（pin 20）：ground
• XTAL1 and XTAL2（pins 19,18）：
– These 2 pins provide external clock.

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 Pins of 8051（2/4）

• RST（pin 9）：reset
– It is an input pin and is active high（normally low）.
• Upon applying a high pulse to RST, the microcontroller will
reset and all values in registers will be lost.

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 Pins of 8051（3/4）

• /EA（pin 31）：external access

– The /EA pin is connected to GND to indicate the code is stored
externally.
– For 8051, /EA pin is connected to Vcc.
– “/” means active low.
• /PSEN（pin 29）：program store enable
– This is an output pin and is connected to the OE pin of the ROM

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 Pins of 8051（4/4）

• ALE（pin 30）：address latch enable

– It is an output pin and is active high.
– 8051 port 0 provides both address and data.
– The ALE pin is used for de-multiplexing the address and data by
connecting to the G pin of the 74LS373 latch.
• I/O port pins
– The four ports P0, P1, P2, and P3.
– Each port uses 8 pins.
– All I/O pins are bi-directional.

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Block Diagram

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•Internal ROM and RAM
•I/O Ports with programmable Pins
•ALU
•Working Registers
•Clock Circuits
•Timers and Counters
•Serial Data Communication.

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 8051 Programming Model

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 Specific Features
• 8 bit cpu with registers A and B
• 16 bit PC and DPTR(data pointer).
• 8 bit program status word(PSW)
• 8 bit Stack Pointer
• 4K Internal ROM
• 128bytes Internal RAM
- 4 register banks each having 8 registers
16 bytes,which may be addressed at the bit level.
80 bytes of general purpose data memory

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 Specific Features
• 32 i/o pins arranged as 4 8 bit ports:P0 to P3
• Two 16 bit timer/counters:T0 and T1
• Full duplex serial data receiver/transmitter
• Control registers:TCON,TMOD,SCON,PCON,IP and IE
• Two external and Three internal interrupt sources.
• Oscillator and Clock Circuits.

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 Pins of I/O Port

• The 8051 has four I/O ports

– Port 0 （pins 32-39）：P0（P0.0～P0.7）
– Port 1（pins 1-8） ：P1（P1.0～P1.7）
– Port 2（pins 21-28）：P2（P2.0～P2.7）
– Port 3（pins 10-17）：P3（P3.0～P3.7）
– Each port has 8 pins.
• Named P0.X （X=0,1,...,7）, P1.X, P2.X, P3.X
• Ex：P0.0 is the bit 0（LSB）of P0
• Ex：P0.7 is the bit 7（MSB）of P0
• These 8 bits form a byte.
• Each port can be used as input or output (bi-direction).

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 Program Counter & Data Pointer
• They are both 16 bit registers.
• Each is to hold the address of a byte in memory
• PC contains the address of the next instruction to be
executed.
• DPTR is made up of two 8 bit register DPH and
DPL;
• DPTR contains the address of internal & external
code and data that has to be accessed.
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 A and B CPU registers
• Totally 34 general purpose registers or working registers.
• Two of these A and B hold results of many instructions,
particularly math and logical operations of 8051 cpu.
• The other 32 are in four banks,B0 – B3 of eight registers
each.
• A(accumulator) is used for
addition,subtraction,mul,div,boolean bit manipulation and
for data transfers.
• But B register can only be used for mul and div
operations.

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 8051 Flag bits and the PSW register
• PSW Register
CY AC F0 RS1 RS0 OV -- P

Carry flag PSW.7 CY

Auxiliary carry flag PSW.6 AC
Available to the user for general purpose PSW.5 --
Register Bank selector bit 1 PSW.4 RS1
Register Bank selector bit 0 PSW.3 RS0
Overflow flag PSW.2 OV
User define bit PSW.1 --
Parity flag Set/Reset odd/even parity PSW.0 P

RS1 RS0 Register Bank Address

0 0 0 00H-07H

0 1 1 08H-0FH

1 0 2 10H-17H

1 1 3 18H-1FH

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•Two flag bits are stored in PCON(Power control)
registers also.

•They are the GF1 (3RD) and GF0(2nd) bits

•They are general purpose user flag bit 1 and 0

respectively

•They can be set or cleared by the program

•For more details of PCON, refer fig 3.13 in text book.

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 Memory Organization
• RAM memory space allocation in the 8051

7FH

Scratch pad RAM

30H

2FH
Bit-Addressable RAM

20H
1FH Register Bank 3
18H
17H
Register Bank 2
10H
0FH (Stack) Register Bank 1
08H
07H
Register Bank 0
00H

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 Stack in the 8051
• The register used to access 7FH
the stack is called SP (stack
pointer) register. Scratch pad RAM

30H

• The stack pointer in the 2FH

Bit-Addressable RAM
8051 is only 8 bits wide,
which means that it can take 20H
1FH Register Bank 3
value 00 to FFH. When 18H
8051 powered up, the SP 17H
10H
Register Bank 2
register contains value 07. 0FH (Stack) Register Bank 1
08H
07H
Register Bank 0
00H

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 Special Function Registers

Name Function Name Function

A Accumulator SBUF Serial Port data

buffer
B Arithmetic SP Stack Pointer
DPH Addressing Ext TMOD Timer/Counter mode
Memory cntrl
DPL Addressing Ext TCON Timer/Counter cntrl
Memory
IE Interrupt enable TL0 Timer0 lower byte
IP Interrupt Priority TH0 Timer0 higher byte
P0 I/O Port Latch TL1 Timer1 lower byte
P1 I/O Port Latch TH1 Timer1 higher byte
P2 I/O Port Latch
P3 I/O Port Latch
PCON Power Control
PSW Pgm Status Word
SCON Serial PortCntrl
 I/O Port Programming
Port 0（pins 32-39）
• When connecting an 8051 to an external memory, the 8051
uses ports to send addresses and read instructions.
– 16-bit address：P0 provides both address A0-A7, P2
provides address A8-A15.
– Also, P0 provides data lines D0-D7.
• When P0 is used for address/data multiplexing, it is
connected to the 74LS373 to latch the address.

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 Port 1（pins 1-8）


• Port 1 is denoted by P1.

– P1.0 ~ P1.7
– P1 as an output port (i.e., write CPU data to the external pin)
– P1 as an input port (i.e., read pin data into CPU bus)

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 ALE Pin
• The ALE pin is used for de-multiplexing the
address and data by connecting to the G pin of
the 74LS373 latch.
– When ALE=0, P0 provides data D0-D7.
– When ALE=1, P0 provides address A0-A7.
– The reason is to allow P0 to multiplex address and
data.

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 Port 3（pins 10-17）
• Although port 3 is configured as an output port upon reset,
this is not the way it is most commonly used.
• Port 3 has the additional function of providing signals.
– Serial communications signal：RxD, TxD
– External interrupt：/INT0, /INT1
– Timer/counter：T0, T1
– External memory accesses ：/WR, /RD

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 Port 3 Alternate Functions
P3 Bit Function Pin

P3.0 RxD 10
P3.1 TxD 11
P3.2 INT0 12
P3.3 INT1 13
P3.4 T0 14
P3.5 T1 15
P3.6 WR 16
P3.7 RD 17 

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 Addressing Modes
The way in which the instruction is specified.

• Immediate
• Register
• Direct
• Register Indirect
• Indexed

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 Immediate Addressing Mode
• Immediate Data is specified in the instruction itself

• Egs:
MOV A,#65H
MOV A,#’A’
MOV R6,#65H
MOV DPTR,#2343H
MOV P1,#65H

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 Register Addressing Mode
MOV Rn, A ;n=0,..,7
ADD A, Rn
MOV DPL, R6

MOV DPTR, A
MOV Rm, Rn

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 Direct Addressing Mode
Although the entire of 128 bytes of RAM can
be accessed using direct addressing mode, it is
most often used to access RAM loc. 30 – 7FH.

MOV R0, 40H

MOV 56H, A
MOV A, 4 ; ≡ MOV A, R4
MOV 6, 2 ; copy R2 to R6
; MOV R6,R2 is invalid !

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 Register Indirect Addressing Mode
• In this mode, register is used as a pointer to the data.

MOV A,@Ri

; move content of RAM loc. Where address is held by Ri into

A
( i=0 or 1 )

MOV @R1,B

In other word, the content of register R0 or R1 is sources or

target in MOV, ADD and SUBB insructions.
 jump

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 Indexed Addressing Mode And On-Chip
ROM Access
• This mode is widely used in accessing data elements
of look-up table entries located in the program (code)
space ROM at the 8051

MOVC A,@A+DPTR
A= content of address A +DPTR from ROM
Note:
Because the data elements are stored in the program
(code ) space ROM of the 8051, it uses the instruction
MOVC instead of MOV. The “C” means code.
Saturday, November 7,
2020