In this chapter we will review (not exhaustively) the range of hardware within the 8051 family. We will also compare the 8051
with other microcontroller families. This is a dense chapter with many tables and should be treated as a reference or starting
point for further research.
This book is about embedded programming in C. It is not an 8051 book. The 8051 is featured in this book because it is a common
(and thriving) family of microcontrollers and has been in the marketplace for nearly 30 years.