The 80186 Microprocessor Architecture

80186 Microprocessor Architecture – The 80186 microprocessor is a 16-bit microprocessor. It operates at a block frequency of 8MHz and with a +5V DC power supply. It’s a 68-pin IC that has a basic architecture similar to the 8086 microprocessor. The 80186 microprocessor was designed with the addition of a few more instructions and additional on-chip circuits. 80186 was thus described as a microprocessor with integrated peripherals. It is not a popular processor and is not widely used.

Architecture of 80186

The basic architecture of the 80186 microprocessor is similar to that of the 8086 microprocessor. Like the 8086 microprocessor, this also contains a bus interface unit (BIU) and an execution unit (EU). In addition to these, the 80186 microprocessor contains the following.

1. Clock generator
2. Programmable timers
3. DMA controller
4. Interrupt controller

Because of the above-mentioned hardware enhancement in BIU and EU, the 80186 microprocessor runs faster with the same instructions. The architecture of 80186 is shown in the figure below.