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A single-board microcontroller is a microcontroller built onto a single printed circuit board. This board provides all of the circuitry necessary for a useful control task: microprocessor, I/O circuits, clock generator, RAM, stored program memory and any support ICs necessary. The intention is that the board is immediately useful to an application developer, without them needing to spend time and effort in developing the controller hardware. As they are usually low-cost hardware, and have an especially low capital cost for development, single-board microcontrollers have long been popular in education. They are also a popular means for developers to gain hands-on experience with a new processor family. == Origins == Single-board microcontrollers appeared in the late 1970s when the first generations of microprocessors, such as the 6502 and the Z80, made it practical to build an entire controller on a single board, and affordable to dedicate a computer to a relatively minor task. In March 1976, Intel announced a single-board computer product that integrated all the support components required for their 8080 microprocessor, along with 1 kbyte of RAM, 4 kbytes of user-programmable ROM, and 48 lines of parallel digital I/O with line drivers. The board also offered expansion through a bus connector, but it could be used without an expansion card cage where applications didn't require additional hardware. Software development for this system was hosted on Intel's Intellec MDS microcomputer development system; this provided assembler and PL/M support, and permitted in-circuit emulation for debugging.〔(Intel SBC 80/10 Single Board Computer brochure ), 1976〕 Processors of this era required a number of support chips in addition. RAM and EPROM were separate, often requiring memory management or refresh circuitry for dynamic memory as well. I/O processing might be carried out by a single chip such as the 8255, but frequently required several more chips. A single-board microcontroller differs from a single-board computer in that it lacks the general purpose user interface and mass storage interfaces that a more general-purpose computer would have. Compared to a microprocessor development board, a microcontroller board would emphasize digital and analog control interconnections to some controlled system, where a development board might by comparison have only a few or no discrete or analog input/output devices. The development board exists to showcase or to train on some particular processor family and this internal implementation is more important than the external function. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Single-board microcontroller」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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