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I started working on BeagleBone Black, and I cannot find out whether BeagleBone is a microcontroller, or some kind of computer? If computer, what makes it a computer?
I worked on different Cortex-M microcontrollers, but I am not sure what BeagleBone really is.
The BeagleBone Black is a single-board computer (SBC).
It contains a AM335x ARM® Cortex-A8 which is a microprocessor (not microcontroller) with some peripherals, including two 32-bit 200 MHz co-processors intended for real-time processing.
The distinction between microcontroller and microprocessor is that the program memory and peripherals are typically external to the latter, though the distinction has faded somewhat in modern times as some processors have many peripherals on board and external memory buses which may or may not be used.
BBB is a computing platform, having a TI Sitara AM335X microprocessor on board, which is ARM Cortex-A8 core. While according to ARM processors classification, are intended for general computing applications as opposed to ARM Cortex-M series, which are intended for microcontroller applications.
BeagleBone Black is a microcomputer. Mostly because it runs a processor, Sitara ARM Cortex M8, and one of the main features of the board is that it can run Linux.
If you go on the Texas Instruments site in the Sitarra section, you will see that most people programming this board interface the board with Linux shells. Isn't that enough proof that it is a computer?
Traditionaly there was a split between microprocessors which are designed to drive a bus system with memory and perhipherals and microcontrollers which have processor, perhipherals and memory on one chip.
More recently chips like the ones on the Pi and beaglebone have appeared. These have the core perhipherals on the chip like a microcontroller but unlike a microcontroller they use external memory. The industry calls these chips "SOCs" (which stands for system-on-chip, a name I find somewhat puzzling since an important component of the system is not on the chip).
