Introduction to microcontrollers

Introduction to microcontrollers
A Microcontroller is an Integrated Circuit (IC) that contains electronic computing unit and logic unit (together known as CPU), Memory (Program Memory and Data Memory), I/O Ports (Input / Output Ports) and few other components integrated on a single chip.

Basically, a Microcontroller consists of the following components.

Central Processing Unit (CPU)
Program Memory (ROM – Read Only Memory/Flash)
Data Memory (RAM – Random Access Memory)
Timers and Counters
I/O Ports (I/O – Input/Output)
Serial Communication Interface
Clock Circuit (Oscillator Circuit)
Interrupt Mechanism
Peripherals like SPI (Serial Peripheral Interface), I2C (Inter Integrated Circuit), ADC (Analog to Digital Converter), DAC (Digital to Analog Converter), CAN (Controlled Area Network), USB (Universal Serial Bus), and many more.