Low-end 8-bit microcontrollers

In the past, 8-bit microcontrollers have dominated the embedded market. The simplicity of their design allows us to write small applications that can accomplish a set of pre-defined tasks, but are too simple and usually equipped with way too few resources to implement an embedded system, especially since 32-bit microcontrollers have evolved to cover all the use cases for these devices within the same range of price, size, and power consumption.

8-bit microcontrollers nowadays are mostly relegated to the market of educational platform kits, aimed at introducing hobbyists and newcomers to the basics of software development on electronic devices. 8-bit platforms are not covered in this book, because they lack the characteristics that allow advanced system programming, multithreading, and advanced features developed to build professional embedded systems.

In the context of this book, the term embedded systems is used to indicate a class of systems running on microcontroller-based hardware architecture, offering constrained resources but allowing to build real-time systems, through features provided by the hardware architecture to implement system programming.