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An Arduino is an open-source microcontroller development platform. In more practical words, you can use the Arduino development platform to build electronics project which can control physical things in real world like motor, fan, switch, LCDs, LEDs, etc .

Arduino platform consists two things

A physical programmable circuit board (often referred to as a microcontroller).
A software, or IDE (Integrated Development Environment) that runs on your computer, used to write and upload computer code to the physical board.

About Arduino :- The Arduino platform has become quite popular with people who are newbies and hobbyist in field of electronics. Arduino platform is build around Atmel's AVR microcontrollers. Unlike most previous programmable circuit boards, the Arduino does't need a separate piece of hardware (called a programmer) in order to load new code onto the board – you can simply use a USB cable to load the code in controller. Additionally, the Arduino IDE uses a simplified version of C++, making it easier to learn to program. At the end, Arduino provides a standard functions of the micro-controller into a more accessible package. You can see arduino UNO in above title pic left.

What is Raspberry Pi ?

The Raspberry Pi is credit-card sized single-board computer developed in the UK by the Raspberry Pi Foundation comes packed with ethernet, USB, a high powered graphics engine(GPU), digital I/O ports and enough CPU power to accomplish your projects.

The short & simple answer is, a very small computer.

Raspberry Pi consists of

700Mhz ARM11 CPU
512 Mb RAM
HDMI Output
Composite Video output
3.5mm Audio Out jack
USB 2.0 Ports
10/100 Ethernet Port
Supports XBMC
Broadcom VideoCore capable of full 1080p HD
Boots from SD Card

About Raspberry Pi :- The Raspberry Pi is a computer that plugs into your screen and a keyboard. It is a capable of doing many of the things that your desktop PC does, like spreadsheets, word-processing, internet surfing and games.

Difference between Arduino and Raspberry Pi

	Arduino (UNO)	Raspberry Pi(B+)

OS	Custom program	Ubuntu, Pidora, RISC OS, Raspbian, Kali Linux, etc

IDE / tool chain	Arduino IDE/ Eclipse	Open Embedded, QEMU, Sratch box, Eclipse

Programming language	Wiring based (C++)	Pythen , C, etc

Architecture	8-bit	32-bit

Processor CORE	AVR's Atmega	ARM

Speed	16 MHz	700 MHz

RAM	2 Kbyte	512 MB

ROM	32 Kbyte	SD card

ADC	6	Internally used

USB	Not available	4 in new version

Audio / Video	Not available	Stereo out, mic, HDMI, NTSC

Cost	24 $ approx	35 $ approx.

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Difference between ARM and other Microcontrollers

This article shows the difference between different microcontrollers available today and used nowadays most, here we classify different microcontroller according to their feature and we will show you how they are different from each other. Then we compare individual microcontroller according to your application need and tell you which one is better for that particular application.

To know what is 8051, AVR, PIC, ARM, MSP430, click on individuals which will drive you to its introduction page.

	ARM	8051	AVR	PIC	MSP430

Bus Width	32-bit mostly also available in 64-bit	8-bit for standard core	8/32-bit	8/16/32-bit	16-bit

Interface types	UART, USART, LIN, I2C, SPI, CAN, USB, Ethernet, I2S, DSP, SAI (serial audio interface), IrDA	UART, USART, SPI, I2C	UART, USART, SPI, I2C, (special purpose AVR support CAN, USB, Ethernet)	PCI, UART, USART, LIN,CAN, Ethernet, SPI, I2S	UART, USART, LIN, I2C, SPI, I2S, IrDA

Speed	1 clock / instruction cycle	12 clock / instruction cycle	1 clock / instruction cycle	4 clock / instruction cycle	6 clock / instruction cycle

Memory	Flash, SDRAM, EEPROM	ROM, SRAM, FLASH	Flash, SRAM, EEPROM	SRAM, FLASH	SRAM, FLASH

ISA	RISC	CISC	RISC	Some feature of RISC	Some feature of RISC

Memory Architecture	Modified Harvard architecture	Von Neumann architecture	Modified Harvard architecture	Harvard architecture	Von Neumann architecture

Power Consumption	Low	Average	Low	Low	Ultra Low

Families	ARMv4,5,6,7 and Cortex series	8051 variants	Tiny, Atmega, Xmega, special purpose AVR,	PIC16, PIC17, PIC18, PIC24, PIC32	MSP430X,MSP430FR57xx, MSP430x1xx to MSP430x6xx series

Community Support	Vast	Vast	Very Good	Very Good	Average

Vendors	Apple, Nvidia, Qualcomm, Samsung Electronics, and TI, etc.	NXP, Atmel, Silicon Labs, Dallas, Cyprus, infineon, etc	Atmel	Microchip	TI

Cost (as compared to feature provided)	Low	Very Low	Average	Average	Average

Other features	High speed operation	Known for its Standard	Cheap, effective	Cheap	Known for Ultra low power operation

Popular microcontrollers	LPC2148, ARM Cortex-M0 to ARM Cortex-M0, etc	AT89C51, P89v51,etc	Atmega8,16,32, Arduino Community	PIC18fXX8, PIC16f88X, PIC32MXXX	MSP430G2553, MSP430 launchpad.

This data is based on certain date, Average of our experience with them, which is continuously evolved and microcontroller vendors are come up with new features time by time.

Which one is better ?

There is always pros and cons. We can not say that this is bad or good. Its up to you that which one is better for your application, so here are some example

ARM - if your application need real time control, fast processing, high end communication protocol and many other function like ADC,PWM along with large memory requirement, then ARM the "Mighty Monster" will best fit for your application.

8051 - if your application need less function with cheap project budget and faithful reliable product choose 8051, as per my personal experience, 8051 is universal solution where cheap budget project and reliable product with less functionality. I have used 8051 cored product in many numbers of application starting from my final year college project to high end machine as supporting controller.

AVR - I have seen this controller in mostly robotics and automobile industries because of its wide community support and simplicity.

PIC - Used in Industrial application of AC, TV, refrigerator and many more cheap project. I was always hater of PIC controllers cause of its paid system development kit and less community support.

MSP430 - What if I am say your whole project will going to run on single AA battery for 5 years or your microcontroller can run even at 0.9V supply voltage. You might not believe, but its possible with MSP430, TI's best product

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Difference between RISC and CISC Architecture

What is ISA ?

Instruction set architecture(ISA) is the set of processor design techniques used to implement the instruction work flow on hardware. In more practical words, ISA tells you that how your processor going to process your program instructions.

There is no standard computer architecture accepting different types like CISC, RISC, etc.

What is CISC ?

Complex instruction set computer (CISC /pronounce as ˈsisk'/) is a computer where single instructions can execute several low-level operations (such as a load from memory, an arithmetic operation, and a memory store) or are capable of multi-step operations or addressing modes within single instructions, as its name suggest "COMPLEX INSTRUCTION SET".

What is RISC ?

A reduced instruction set computer (RISC /pronounce as ˈrisk'/) is a computer which only use simple instructions that can be divide into multiple instructions which perform low-level operation within single clock cycle, as its name suggest "REDUCED INSTRUCTION SET"

Understand RISC & CISC architecture with example

Let we take an example of multiplying two numbers

A = A * B; <<<======this is C statement

The CISC Approach :- The primary goal of CISC architecture is to complete a task in as few lines of assembly as possible. This is achieved by building processor hardware that is capable of understanding & executing a series of operations, this is where our CISC architecture introduced .

For this particular task, a CISC processor would come prepared with a specific instruction (we'll call it "MULT"). When executed, this instruction

Loads the two values into separate registers

Multiplies the operands in the execution unit

And finally third, stores the product in the appropriate register.

Thus, the entire task of multiplying two numbers can be completed with one instruction:

MULT A,B <<<======this is assembly statement

MULT is what is known as a "complex instruction." It operates directly on the computer's memory banks and does not require the programmer to explicitly call any loading or storing functions.

Advantage:-

Compiler has to do very little work to translate a high-level language statement into assembly.
Length of the code is relatively short
Very little RAM is required to store instructions.
The emphasis is put on building complex instructions directly into the hardware.

The RISC Approach :- RISC processors only use simple instructions that can be executed within one clock cycle. Thus, the "MULT" command described above could be divided into three separate commands:

"LOAD" which moves data from the memory bank to a register

"PROD" which finds the product of two operands located within the registers

"STORE" which moves data from a register to the memory banks.

In order to perform the exact series of steps described in the CISC approach, a programmer would need to code four lines of assembly:

LOAD R1, A <<<======this is assembly statement

LOAD R2,B <<<======this is assembly statement

PROD A, B <<<======this is assembly statement

STORE R3, A <<<======this is assembly statement

At first, this may seem like a much less efficient way of completing the operation. Because there are more lines of code, more RAM is needed to store the assembly level instructions. The compiler must also perform more work to convert a high-level language statement into code of this form.

Advantage:-

Each instruction requires only one clock cycle to execute, the entire program will execute in approximately the same amount of time as the multi-cycle "MULT" command.
These RISC "reduced instructions" require less transistors of hardware space than the complex instructions, leaving more room for general purpose registers. Because all of the instructions execute in a uniform amount of time (i.e. one clock).
Pipelining is possible.

LOAD/STORE mechanism:- Separating the "LOAD" and "STORE" instructions actually reduces the amount of work that the computer must perform. After a CISC-style "MULT" command is executed, the processor automatically erases the registers. If one of the operands needs to be used for another computation, the processor must re-load the data from the memory bank into a register. In RISC, the operand will remain in the register until another value is loaded in its place.

Comparison of RISC & CISC

CISC	RISC
Emphasis on hardware	Emphasis on software
Includes multi-clock	Single-clock
complex instructions	reduced instruction only
Memory-to-memory: "LOAD" and "STORE" incorporated in instructions	Register to register: "LOAD" and "STORE" are independent instructions
high cycles per second, Small code sizes	Low cycles per second, large code sizes
Transistors used for storing complex instructions	Spends more transistors on memory registers

Example of RISC & CISC

Examples of CISC instruction set architectures are PDP-11, VAX, Motorola 68k, and your desktop PCs on intel's x86 architecture based too .

Examples of RISC families include DEC Alpha, AMD 29k, ARC, Atmel AVR, Blackfin, Intel i860 and i960, MIPS, Motorola 88000, PA-RISC, Power (including PowerPC), SuperH, SPARC and ARM too.

Which one is better ?

We can not differentiate RISC and CISC technology because both are suitable at its specific application. What counts is how fast a chip can execute the instructions it is given and how well it runs existing software. Today, both RISC and CISC manufacturers are doing everything to get an edge on the competition.

What's new ?

You might thinking that RISC is nowdays used in microcontroller application widely so its better for that particular application and CISC at desktop application. But reality is boh are at threat position cause of a new technology called EPIC.

EPIC ( Explicitly Parallel Instruction Computing ) :-EPIC is a invented by Intel and is in a way, a combination of both CISC and RISC. This will in theory allow the processing of Windows-based as well as UNIX-based applications by the same CPU.

Intel is working on it under code-name Merced. Microsoft is already developing their Win64 standard for it. Like the name says, Merced will be a 64-bit chip.

If Intel’s EPIC architecture is successful, it might be the biggest thread for RISC. All of the big CPU manufactures but Sun and Motorola are now selling x86-based products, and some are just waiting for Merced to come out (HP, SGI). Because of the x86 market it is not likely that CISC will die soon, but RISC may.

So the future might bring EPIC processors and more CISC processors, while the RISC processors are becoming extinct.

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Arduino Vs Raspberry Pi

Difference between ARM and other Microcontrollers

Difference between RISC and CISC Architecture