Abstract :
Three CMOS (Complimentary Metal Oxide Semiconductor) 8 bit microprocessors (CPU) and eleven versions of three single chip microcomputers (MCU) have been compared regarding hardware features, assembly language, bus architecture, and internal register architecture. They are the Intersil IM6100, National Semiconductor NSC-800, RCA CDP1802, Motorola MC146805E2, National Semiconductor NS80C35, and the RCA CDP1805. Several power reduction techniques for microcomputer systems are also briefly discussed. This survey was conducted to evaluate the field of currently available CMOS CPU´s and MCU´s. Many manufacturers are currently working on CMOS versions of other processors. This will result in a significant increase within the next year or two of the number of processors available in CMOS.