Digital Clock Application with ATMEGA328p Microprocessor

Running head: AVR ATMEGA 328p 1
Digital Clock Application with ATMEGA328p Microprocessor
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AVR ATMEGA 328p 2
Digital Clock Application with ATMEGA328p Microprocessor
ATMEGA 328p is a type of microprocessor family designed and manufactured by the
ATMEGA Company. The microprocessor is based on an advanced Virtual RISC microcontroller
AVR- reduced instruction set computer. Present-day microcontrollers including ATMEGA 328p
perform a wide range of industrial functions that were previously a preserve for programmable
logic controllers and analog circuits and other devices (Hutter & Peter, 2013). The main
purpose of this paper is to describe ATMEGA 328p as a digital microcontroller by looking into
its powerful features that include interrupt handling, on-chip peripherals, and powerful core
architecture.
The microcontroller can support data up to 8 bits thanks to an in-built 32 Kilo Bytes
memory. It uses 1Kilo Byte Electrically Erasable Programmable Read-Only Memory
(EEPROM), a property that implies that failure of power supply does not affect the status of
stored data. Additionally, the devices include a 2KB Static RAM besides many more features
that make it popular in the market. It is especially known for its low power consumption,
exemplarily good performance, high throughput, real-time counter that is made of separate
oscillators, 6 PWM pins and a programmable Serial USART (Kunikowski, Czerwiński,
Olejnik, & Awrejcewicz, 2015). The key features that the microcontroller is identified with
include the advanced reduced instruction set carefully designed to enable the device to perform a
smaller number of instructions so as to make it operate at higher speeds.
The device’s core architecture is designed in such a way that correct program execution is
guaranteed. To make this a reality, the Central Processing Unit (CPU) has access to the memory,
peripheral devices and is greatly empowered to handle all forms of interrupts. The architecture of