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There is no global standard of definitions, what you might be seeing is the difference in the educational system in different parts of the world. We know defin

There is no global standard of definitions, what you might be seeing is the difference in the educational system in different parts of the world. We know definitions change over time because slang words come and go and someone's vocabulary can be used to identify people online or identify their knowledge.

blueflow 5y ago
Whatever, but if someone of the "Distinction Criteria is existence of MMU" crowd comes and claims the 8086 is not a microprocessor, because it doesn't have an MMU (which would be a logical conclusion from the article). i'll probably not be respectful.
- Terry_Roll 5y ago
  Well these are a couple of online definitions: MicroController - a control device which incorporates a microprocessor. MicroProcessor - an integrated circuit that contains all the functions of a central processing unit of a computer. The problem with these definitions is a control device and computer are two different things, so I wonder if he is applying an engineer's perspective/definition to the 8086 even though many know the 8086 were used in the early computers. This is a bit like arguing whether a microprocessor is a microprocessor because of the inclusion or exclusion of one or more instruction sets, ie a basic intel cpu with a minimum instruction set or a xeon intel cpu with a much more extensive number of instruction sets. Or are you picking up on an AI masquerading as a blogger and have highlighted something an AI wouldnt pick up on from online technical resources?
- marcan_42 5y ago
  The clearest distinction today is the lack of an MMU. That's just a useful metric to go by that neatly divides SoCs into "things intended to run bare metal/RTOS code" and "things intended to run Linux", that are two different product groups with significant differences. Obviously this wasn't always the case, e.g. a good 15+ years ago I put ucLinux on an old ISP router I had lying around for fun, and it was an ARM946 without an MMU. But that class of device no longer exists today for all practical purposes, and so it's easy to use the existence of an MMU to decide what to call them. The 8086 may have been a microprocessor, and so was the 80186, but you know where you find 80186 cores today? Microcontrollers. Specifically, some video processing chip manufacturers (e.g. stuff that goes into monitors and DP-HDMI adapters) seem to like using V186 cores still.

blueflow 5y ago

Whatever, but if someone of the "Distinction Criteria is existence of MMU" crowd comes and claims the 8086 is not a microprocessor, because it doesn't have an MMU (which would be a logical conclusion from the article). i'll probably not be respectful.

Terry_Roll 5y ago
Well these are a couple of online definitions: MicroController - a control device which incorporates a microprocessor. MicroProcessor - an integrated circuit that contains all the functions of a central processing unit of a computer. The problem with these definitions is a control device and computer are two different things, so I wonder if he is applying an engineer's perspective/definition to the 8086 even though many know the 8086 were used in the early computers. This is a bit like arguing whether a microprocessor is a microprocessor because of the inclusion or exclusion of one or more instruction sets, ie a basic intel cpu with a minimum instruction set or a xeon intel cpu with a much more extensive number of instruction sets. Or are you picking up on an AI masquerading as a blogger and have highlighted something an AI wouldnt pick up on from online technical resources?
marcan_42 5y ago
The clearest distinction today is the lack of an MMU. That's just a useful metric to go by that neatly divides SoCs into "things intended to run bare metal/RTOS code" and "things intended to run Linux", that are two different product groups with significant differences. Obviously this wasn't always the case, e.g. a good 15+ years ago I put ucLinux on an old ISP router I had lying around for fun, and it was an ARM946 without an MMU. But that class of device no longer exists today for all practical purposes, and so it's easy to use the existence of an MMU to decide what to call them. The 8086 may have been a microprocessor, and so was the 80186, but you know where you find 80186 cores today? Microcontrollers. Specifically, some video processing chip manufacturers (e.g. stuff that goes into monitors and DP-HDMI adapters) seem to like using V186 cores still.