Question

If we say microcontroller is 8-bit then here 8-bit denotes size of:

(a) Data Bus

(b) ALU

(c) Control Bus

(d) Address Bus

This question was posed to me in an interview.

My question is based upon Introduction to Microcontroller topic in division Microcontroller Basics of Microcontroller

Answer 1

Correct answer is (b) ALU

Explanation: If we say a microcontroller is 8-bit it means that it is capable of processing 8-bit data at a time. Data processing is the task of ALU and if ALU is able to process 8-bit data then the data bus should be 8-bit wide. In most books it tells that size of data bus but to be precise it is the size of ALU because in Harvard Architecture there are two sets of data bus which can be of same size but it is not mandatory.