Intel Microcontroller Families
MCS-48 MCS-41 MCS-51 MCS-96

• On-Board ROM size
• On-Board RAM size
• Reprogrammability
• ADCs
• Timers
• And many other features

Intel MCS-48 - Introduced 1976

The Intel 8048 microcontroller, Intel's first µC, was used in the Magnavox Odyssey² video game console (as a 100KHz 8021) and (in its 8042 variant) in the original IBM PC keyboard. The 8048 is probably the most prominent member of Intel's MCS-48 familiy of microcontrollers. It was inspired by, and is somewhat similar to, the Fairchild F8 microprocessor.

The MCS-48 has over 90 instructions with 90% of them being single byte.

The 8048 has a modified Harvard architecture, with internal or external program ROM and 64–256 bytes of internal (on-chip) RAM. The I/O is mapped into its own address space, separate from programs and data. Though the 8048 was eventually replaced by the very popular Intel 8051, even at the turn of the millennium it remains quite popular, due to its low cost, wide availability, memory efficient one-byte instruction set, and mature development tools. Because of this it is much used in high-volume consumer electronics devices such as TV sets, TV remotes, toys, and other
gadgets where cost-cutting is essential.

Intel MCS-41 - Introduced 1979

MCS-41 are slave controllers commonly used for keyboard control or other simple tasks such as ADC control.

The Intel UPI-41/42 is a general-purpose Universal Peripheral Interface that allows designers to grow their own customized solution for peripheral device control. It contains a low-cost microcomputer with 2K of program memory, 128 bytes of data memory, 8-bit timer/counter, and clock generator in a single 40-pin package. Interface registers are included to enable the UPI device to function as a peripheral controller in the
MCSÉ-48,MCS-51, MCS-80, MCS-85, 8088, 8086 and other 8-, 16-bit systems. The 8742 is software, pin, and architecturally compatible
with the 8741A. The 8742 doubles the on-chip memory space to allow for additional features and performance to be incorporated in upgraded 8741A designs. For new designs, the additional memory and performance of the 8742 extends the UPI concept to more complex motor control
tasks, 80-column printers and process control applications as examples.

The UPI-41 has over 90 instructions with 70% of them being single byte.

Intel MCS-51 - Introduced 1980

The MCS-51 Family includes 2 timers and 4 ports as well as 128bytes or more of on board RAM. The 51 is one of the most popular MCUs on the market. It is now being made in speeds of up to 100MHz by SiLabs, while Intel continues to make them up to 33MHz.

The standard MCS-51 instruction set has 111 instructions with 64 of them executing in a single cycle. They can support up to 64k of external prgram, and 54k of external memory space.

The MCS-51 family is now made by dozens of companies, with many different features. Below is but a small list of these companies:
All told there areover 1000 versions of the 8051 core.
AMD
Atmel 89x
Dallas-Maxim
Infineon C500
Intel
SiLabs
Philips
And many more...

The Intel 8xC251TB/TQ and 8xC251SA/SB/SP/SQ are based on the new high performance MCS® 251 micro-controller architecture. Being members of the MCS 251 microcontroller family, the 8xC251TB/TQ and 8xC251SA/SB/SP/SQ have the same advanced register based CPU architecture and a pipelined instruction execution unit. They use the powerful MCS 251 microcontroller instruction set, with many enhanced 8, 16 and 32-bit instructions available. The new microcontrollers are also specially designed to execute C code efficiently. Most importantly, the 8xC251TB/TQ and 8xC251SA/SB/SP/SQ are binary code and pin compatible with the existing MCS 51 microcontrollers. They represent the easiest way to upgrade performance of existing MCS 51 microcontroller applications, delivering up to 15 times the performance.

Intel MCS-96 - Introduced 1982

Intel® MCS 96 microcontroller family of products are popular for 16-bit embedded microcontrollers. The 8XC196 products are found in a variety of embedded applications. The high-performance register to register architecture is well suited for complex real-time control applications such as hard disk drives, modems, printers, pattern recognition and motor control. Our broad portfolio of 8XC196 microcontroller products has been designed to meet your varying peripheral, memory size, addressability and performance requirements.


The 8XC196 family shares a common core architecture which is register based. The MCS 96 microcontroller register architecture eliminates the accumulator bottleneck and enables fast context switching. All devices have bit, byte, word and some 32-bit operations. The table below summarizes the capture and generation of high speed signals on the HSIO and EPA.

The MCS-96, like the MCS-51 is a MCU that is still being made, after 25 years of production there is still no plans to terminate it, just add more features, and get the clock even higher.