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8051 Chip Companies: Manufacturers of 8051 Microcontrollers

Who Makes 8051's?
This Guide is not a technical discussion, meant to prove which 8051 is "the best." Rather, every embedded design is unique and so we feel it is more important to help you the designer identify the entire ecosystem of available 8051 choices. In the chip field, here are some of the companies that produce 8051's. The best and easiest way to identify who makes 8051's is not to use Google. Rather, we suggest you go to one of the following distributors and enter "8051" into their search engine. That way, you'll get real-time data of who is still making the 8051 and in most cases you can drill down to product details.

Here are the distributors to check out:

• Digikey
• Jameco Electronics
• Mouser Electronics, Inc.

In researching the most active chip companies in the 8051 ecosystem, here are some news tidbits. Probably the most interesting company is Silicon Labs . According to the company:

Our 8-bit mixed-signal MCUs integrate world-class analog, a pipelined 8051 CPU, in-system programmable Flash memory and on-chip debug in each device. No other MCU supplier can provide the level of high-performance analog and functional density to provide user with design flexibility, improved time-to-market, superior system performance and greater end product differentiation.
(Cited here , 25 February 2009).

What's really cool is their Toolstick, an easy to use development system that allows designers to develop and debug application firmware directly on the target microcontroller using the Silicon Labs Integrated Development Environment (IDE). Once complete, designers can replace the Daughter Card with a Programming Adapter and program blank devices for use in their actual system. The "starter kit" is available online and costs only $24.95! (Details, here .)

A second very active semiconductor company is Maxim , and their 8051 page is here . That company claims, their "8051 drop-in microcontrollers retain instruction-set and object-code compatibility with previous 8051 designs, yet provide an instant 33x performance boost." Their really cool development kit, the "DS89C450-K00," doesn't just have a trendy name, it's available for only $89.00, here .

Finally, Atmel is also active in the 8051 space, here . Nuvoton is as well.

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