Evolution

Intel 4004

The first microcontroller was developed by a small company called Intel (initials of Integrated Electronics ) in the 1970s, with the objective of create and market chipset the general purpose. The 4-bits Intel 4004 and Intel 8008 released in 1971, were single-chip microprocessor, both processors required external chips to implement a working system, which makes them very expensive and not very functional.

Other source say that the firsts in developed a chipset were the engineers of TI (initials of Texas Instruments ) Gary Boone and Michael Cochran, they created in 1971 the TMS 1000 a microcontroller that  basically had  read-only memory, read/write memory, processor and clock on one chip.

TMS 1000

Later Intel developed the Intel 8048 y the Intel 8051 introduced in the year of 1976, of the witch sold more of thousand millions of devices, were used in the keyboards of the computers of IBM. Actually variations  of 8051 are still sold, being the most long-lived electronic design history.

Intel 8051

During the 1990s, microcontrollers with electrically erasable and programmable ROM (EEPROM) memories, such as flash memory. Before reprogrammable electrical devices was necessary programming skills, which is complex and a limitation. Today enough with a electrical signal for erase and program a chipset.

Nowadays has besides of general purpose devices, specialized microcontrollers are being produced for areas such as automotive, lighting, communications and low-power consumer devices. In 2010 was created the flash Atmel microcontroller which has a size of 2 mm x 2 mm, sufficient to control a toy

Atmel flash