Microprocessor and Microcontroller Interview Questions

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Microprocessor and Microcontroller Interview Questions

What Are The Various Criteria To Choose The Microcontroller?

The important criteria to be considered in choosing micro controllers are:

Availability of software development tools like compilers, debuggers, assemblers
Meeting the computing needs of the task at hand efficiently at low-cost.

  • Wide availability
  • Reliable sources/manufacturers
  • The amount of RAM and ROM on chip
  • The number of I/O pins and the timer on the chip
  • Power consumption
  • Speed of the device
  • Packaging
  • Cost per unit.

List Some Of The 8051 Microcontroller Manufacturers?

  • Intel
  • Philips
  • Infineon
  • Maxim/Dellas semiconductor
  • Atmel

What Is Difference Between Microprocessor And Microcontroller?

The microprocessor has no ROM, RAM and no I/O ports on the chip itself.Whereas the microcontroller has a CPU in addition to a fixed amount of RAM,ROM, I/O ports and a timer all on a single chip.

List Out Some Of The Features Of The 8051?

  • ROM - 4K bytes
  • RAM - 128 bytes
  • Timer - 2 no
  • I/O Pins - 32
  • Serial Port - 1
  • Interrupt sources - 6

What Are The Various Types Of Memories Used In Microcontroller/microprocessor?

  • ROM - Read Only Memory
  • RAM - Random Access Memory
  • PROM - Programmable Read Only Memory
  • EPROM - Erasable Programmable Read Only Memory
  • EEROM - Electrically Erasable Programmable Read Only Memory

What Is Meant By Flipflop?

A Flip-flop is a basic electronic circuit used for storing information in a digital machine.
It is a bistable device. It means it has two stable states.

It has one or more inputs and two complement outputs.

What Is A Bus?

Group of lines connecting the microprocessor with other components of a computer system is called a bus. It is a communication path over which electrical signals representing binary digits ( 0, 1) are transmitted.

For a single bit to transmit, one line is used. The width of the bus is number of lines that are used to constitute that bus.

What Is Data Bus?

Data Bus: Group of lines that transmit data in and out of the microprocessor is called the data bus. Here the data can flow in both directions between the microprocessor and the peripheral devices. Hence the data bus is bidirectional.

The width of the data bus depends on the architecture of the microprocessor. For an example, an 8 bit processor can operate on 8 bits of data at a time and has a 8 bit wide data bus.

What Is Address Bus?

Address Bus:Group of lines used by the microprocessor to send the address of the device or the memory location which the microprocessor needs to access.

The address bits flow in one direction, ie, from the microprocessor to the peripheral devices.Hence the address bus is unidirectional.The width of the address bus determines the maximum number of memory locations that the microprocessor can access.

What Is Multiplexing?

Multiplexing:Using a single bus for two different functions is called multiplexing.For an example, in 8085 microprocessor the low order 8 bits of the address and data are transmitted using AD7- AD0 lines.

These lines are also used as low order address bus during execution of instructions.Thus the same lines are used for transmitting address and data.This is called as multiplexing.These lines are called as multiplexed address/data bus.

What Is A Microprocessor?

Microprocessor is a program-controlled device, which fetches the instructions from memory, decodes and executes the instructions. Most Micro Processor are single- chip devices.

What Are The Flags In 8086?

In 8086 Carry flag, Parity flag, Auxiliary carry flag, Zero flag, Overflow flag, Trace flag, Interrupt flag, Direction flag, and Sign flag.

Doself-accesss by giving the objective test :

Why Crystal Is A Preferred Clock Source?

Because of high stability, large Q (Quality Factor) & the frequency that doesn’t drift with aging. Crystal is used as a clock source most of the times.

In 8085 Which Is Called As High Order / Low Order Register?

Flag is called as Low order register & Accumulator is called as High order Register.

What Is Tri-state Logic?

Three Logic Levels are used and they are High, Low, High impedance state.

The high and low are normal logic levels & high impedance state is electrical open circuit conditions. Tri-state logic has a third line called enable line.

What Happens When Hlt Instruction Is Executed In Processor?

The Micro Processor enters into Halt-State and the buses are tri-stated.

Which Stack Is Used In 8085?

LIFO (Last In First Out) stack is used in 8085.In this type of Stack the last stored information can be retrieved first

What Is Program Counter?

Program counter holds the address of either the first byte of the next instruction to be fetched for execution or the address of the next byte of a multi byte instruction, which has not been completely fetched.

In both the cases it gets incremented automatically one by one as the instruction bytes get fetched. Also Program register keeps the address of the next instruction.

What Are The Various Registers In 8085?

Accumulator register, Temporary register, Instruction register, Stack Pointer, Program Counter are the various registers in 8085

What Is 1st / 2nd / 3rd / 4th Generation Processor?

The processor made of PMOS / NMOS / HMOS / HCMOS technology is called 1st / 2nd / 3rd / 4th generation processor, and it is made up of 4 / 8 / 16 / 32 bits.

Name The Processor Lines Of Two Major Manufacturer?

High-end: Intel – Pentium (II, III, 4), AMD – Athlon. Low-end: Intel – Celeron, AMD – Duron. 64-bit: Intel – Itanium 2, AMD – Opteron.

What’s The Speed And Device Maximum Specs For Firewire?

IEEE 1394 (Firewire) supports the maximum of 63 connected devices with speeds up to 400 Mbps. Where’s MBR located on the disk?

Main Boot Record is located in sector 0, track 0, head 0, cylinder 0 of the primary active partition.

Where Does The Cpu Enhanced Mode Originate From?

Intel’s 80386 was the first 32-bit processor, and since the company had to backward-support the 8086.

All the modern Intel-based processors run in the Enhanced mode, capable of switching between Real mode (just like the real 8086) and Protected mode, which is the current mode of operation.

How Many Bit Combinations Are There In A Byte?

Byte contains 8 combinations of bits.

Have You Studied Buses? What Types?

There are three types of buses.

Address bus: This is used to carry the Address to the memory to fetch either Instruction or Data.

Data bus : This is used to carry the Data from the memory.

Control bus : This is used to carry the Control signals like RD/WR, Select etc.

What Is The Maximum Clock Frequency In 8086?

5 Mhz is the Maximum clock frequency in 8086.

What Is Meant By Maskable Interrupts?

An interrupt that can be turned off by the programmer is known as Maskable interrupt.

What Do You Mean By The Term Embedded Controllers?

The devices that has all the functional blocks on chip, including the program and data memory and there is no external data/address bus provided. For example, ATMEL89C2051.

Discuss The Advantages Of Microcontroller Over Microprocessor In Control Applications?

The first main advantage is that the ALUs can be assembled together horizontally to form computers that can handle very large data at a time.

Another advantage is bit slice design that makes use of possible bipolar chip technology that is very fast.

What Are Risc And Cisc Processors?

RISC chips requires lesser hardware implementations, which makes them simpler to design and hence lesser costs of production.

Discuss The Criteria For Selecting A Micro-controller Device?

It must have ram and rom to support its inbuilt functions. It must have +5v supply, must be fast and should have programmable and data memory.

Discuss The Advantages And Disadvantages Of Harvard And Von Neuman Architectures?

Harvard architecture uses separate memories for program and data memory whereas Von Neuman uses same program and data memory.Therefore Harvard is faster compared to other one.

Name 2 Register That Consists Of 16 Bit?

  • Program counter
  • Data pointer

Name Few General Purpose Registers?

Accumulator, B-register, R0- R7

What Are Sfr?

The 128 bytes of on-chip additional RAM locations from 80H to 0FFH are reserved for the special functions and therefore these are called as special function register.

Can An Rc Circuit Be Used As Clock Source For 8085?

Yes, it can be used, if an accurate clock frequency is not required. Also, the component cost is low compared to LC or Crystal

Which Interrupt Has The Highest Priority?

TRAP has the highest priority

What Are Hardware Interrupts?

TRAP, RST7.5, RST6.5, RST5.5, INTR

What Does Quality Factor Mean?

The Quality factor is also defined, as Q. So it is a number, which reflects the lossness of a circuit. Higher the Q, the lower are the losses.

What Is Stack Pointer?

Stack pointer is a special purpose 16-bit register in the Microprocessor, which holds the address of the top of the stack.

What Are Level-triggering Interrupt?

RST 6.5 & RST 5.5 are level-triggering interrupts.

What Is The Difference Between Primary & Secondary Storage Device?

In primary storage device the storage capacity is limited. It has a volatile memory. In secondary storage device the storage capacity is larger.

It is a nonvolatile memory. Primary devices are: RAM / ROM. Secondary devices are: Floppy disc / Hard disk.

Name 5 Different Addressing Modes?

  • Immediate
  • Direct
  • Register
  • Register indirect
  • Implied addressing modes

What Is Clock Frequency For 8085?

3 MHz is the maximum clock frequency for 8085.

What Is The Difference Between 8086 And 8088?

The BIU in 8088 is 8-bit data bus & 16- bit in 8086.Instruction queue is 4 byte long in 8088and 6 byte in 8086.

Give Example For Non-maskable Interrupts?

Trap is known as Non-Maskable interrupts, which is used in emergency condition.

What Is Sim And Rim Instructions?

SIM: is Set Interrupt Mask. Used to mask the hardware interrupts.

RIM: is Read Interrupt Mask. Used to check whether the interrupt is Masked or not.

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