Книга: Introduction to Microprocessors and Microcontrollers

Where do we go from here?

After the early one-chip microcomputer, the decreasing cost of the design and production of the integrated circuits made it easier to increase the complexity of the chips.

This has caused the development to diverge along two separate paths: speed and power or cheap and small.

By heading off in the cheap and small route, we get microcontrollers that are controlling the operation of most of the instruments and machines that we use and even playing tunes in greetings cards. We will meet these in Chapters 15 and 16.

The never-ending pursuit of more speed and more power for computers has resulted in the continuous development of larger and faster microprocessors like the Pentium 4 and its competitors. Each new design is king for a day, and then overtaken and dispatched to the museum. What cost a fortune three years ago is thrown out with the garbage, unwanted. We will look at these here today, gone tomorrow devices in the next three chapters.

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