CPU platforms

Embedded processors can be broken into two broad categories: ordinary microprocessors (μP) and microcontrollers (μC), which have many more peripherals on chip, reducing cost and size. Contrasting to the personal computer and server markets, a fairly large number of basic CPU architectures are used; there are Von Neumann as well as various degrees of Harvard architectures, RISC as well as non-RISC and VLIW; word lengths vary from 4-bit to 64-bits and beyond (mainly in DSP processors) although the most typical remain 8/16-bit. Most architectures come in a large number of different variants and shapes, many of which are also manufactured by several different companies.

A long but still not exhaustive list of common architectures are: 65816, 65C02, 68HC08, 68HC11, 68k, 8051, ARM, AVR, AVR32, Blackfin, C167, Coldfire, COP8, eZ8, eZ80, FR-V, H8, HT48, M16C, M32C, MIPS, MSP430, PIC, PowerPC, R8C, SHARC, ST6, SuperH, TLCS-47, TLCS-870, TLCS-900, Tricore, V850, x86, XE8000, Z80, AsAP etc.