General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) is a packet oriented mobile data standard on the 2G and 3G cellular communication network's global system for mobile communications (GSM). GPRS was established by European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) in response to the earlier CDPD and i-mode packet-switched cellular technologies. It is now maintained by the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP).
The Motorola DSP56000 is a family of digital signal processor (DSP) chips produced by Motorola Semiconductor starting in 1986 and is still being produced in more advanced models in the 2010s. The 56k series was quite popular for a time in a number of computers, including the NeXT, Atari Falcon030 and SGI Indigo workstations all using the 56001. Upgraded 56k versions are still used today in audio equipment, radars, communications devices and various other embedded DSP applications. The 56000 was also used as the basis for the updated 96000, which was not commercially successful.
A system on a chip is an integrated circuit that integrates all or most components of a computer or other electronic system. These components almost always include a central processing unit (CPU), memory, input/output ports and secondary storage – all on a single substrate or microchip, the size of a coin. It must contain digital, analog, mixed-signal, and often radio frequency signal processing functions, otherwise it will only be considered as an application processor. As they are integrated on a single substrate, SoCs consume much less power and take up much less area than multi-chip designs with equivalent functionality. Because of this, SoCs are very common in the mobile computing and edge computing markets. System on a chip are typically fabricated using metal–oxide–semiconductor (MOS) technology, and are commonly used in embedded systems and the Internet of Things. Higher-performance SoCs are often paired with dedicated and physically separate memory and secondary storage chips, that may be layered on top of the SoC in what's known as a Package on package (PoP) configuration.
The MSP430 is a mixed-signal microcontroller family from Texas Instruments. Built around a 16-bit CPU, the MSP430 is designed for low cost and, specifically, low power consumption embedded applications.
The DECstation was a brand of computers used by DEC, and refers to three distinct lines of computer systems—the first released in 1978 as a word processing system, and the latter two both released in 1989. These comprised a range of computer workstations based on the MIPS architecture and a range of PC compatibles. The MIPS-based workstations ran Ultrix, a DEC-proprietary version of UNIX, and early releases of OSF/1.
In communications, Circuit Switched Data (CSD) is the original form of data transmission developed for the time-division multiple access (TDMA)-based mobile phone systems like Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM). After 2010 many telecommunication carriers dropped support for CSD, and CSD has been superseded by GPRS and EDGE (E-GPRS).
The Blackfin is a family of 16-/32-bit microprocessors developed, manufactured and marketed by Analog Devices. The processors have built-in, fixed-point digital signal processor (DSP) functionality supplied by 16-bit multiply–accumulates (MACs), accompanied on-chip by a microcontroller. It was designed for a unified low-power processor architecture that can run operating systems while simultaneously handling complex numeric tasks such as real-time H.264 video encoding.
The OMAP family, developed by Texas Instruments, was a series of image/video processors. They are proprietary system on chips (SoCs) for portable and mobile multimedia applications. OMAP devices generally include a general-purpose ARM architecture processor core plus one or more specialized co-processors. Earlier OMAP variants commonly featured a variant of the Texas Instruments TMS320 series digital signal processor.
A PHY, an abbreviation for "physical layer", is an electronic circuit, usually implemented as an integrated circuit, required to implement physical layer functions of the OSI model in a network interface controller.
Universal Software Radio Peripheral (USRP) is a range of software-defined radios designed and sold by Ettus Research and its parent company, National Instruments. Developed by a team led by Matt Ettus, the USRP product family is intended to be a comparatively inexpensive hardware platform for software radio, and is commonly used by research labs, universities, and hobbyists.
ARM7 is a group of older 32-bit RISC ARM processor cores licensed by ARM Holdings for microcontroller use. The ARM7 core family consists of ARM700, ARM710, ARM7DI, ARM710a, ARM720T, ARM740T, ARM710T, ARM7TDMI, ARM7TDMI-S, ARM7EJ-S. The ARM7TDMI and ARM7TDMI-S were the most popular cores of the family.
Atmel ARM-based processors are microcontrollers and microprocessors integrated circuits, by Microchip Technology, that are based on various 32-bit ARM processor cores, with in-house designed peripherals and tool support.
ARM9 is a group of older 32-bit RISC ARM processor cores licensed by ARM Holdings for microcontroller use. The ARM9 core family consists of ARM9TDMI, ARM940T, ARM9E-S, ARM966E-S, ARM920T, ARM922T, ARM946E-S, ARM9EJ-S, ARM926EJ-S, ARM968E-S, ARM996HS. Since ARM9 cores were released from 1998 to 2006, they are no longer recommended for new IC designs, instead ARM Cortex-A, ARM Cortex-M, ARM Cortex-R cores are preferred.
McASP is an acronym for Multichannel Audio Serial Port, a communication peripheral found in Texas Instruments family of digital signal processors (DSPs) and Microcontroller Units (MCUs).
The McASP functions as a general-purpose audio serial port optimized for the needs of multichannel audio applications. Depending on the implementation, the McASP may be useful for time-division multiplexed (TDM) stream, Inter-Integrated Sound (I2S) protocols, and intercomponent digital audio interface transmission (DIT). However, some implementations are limited to supporting just the Inter-Integrated Sound (I2S) protocol.
The McASP consists of transmit and receive sections that may operate synchronized, or completely independently with separate master clocks, bit clocks, and frame syncs, and using different transmit modes with different bit-stream formats. The McASP module also includes up to 16 serializers that can be individually enabled to either transmit or receive. In addition, all of the McASP pins can be configured as general-purpose input/output (GPIO) pins.
A system on a module (SOM) is a board-level circuit that integrates a system function in a single module. It may integrate digital and analog functions on a single board. A typical application is in the area of embedded systems. Unlike a single-board computer, a SOM serves a special function like a system on a chip (SoC). The device integrated in the SOM typically requires a high level of interconnection for reasons such as speed, timing, bus-width etc., in a highly integrated module. There are benefits in building a SOM, as for SoC; one notable result is to reduce the cost of the base board or the main PCB. Two other major advantages of SOMs are design-reuse and that they can be integrated into many embedded computer applications.
NeuroMatrix is a digital signal processor (DSP) series developed by NTC Module. The DSP has a VLIW/SIMD architecture. It consists of a 32-bit RISC core and a 64-bit vector co-processor. The vector co-processor supports vector operations with elements of variable bit length and is optimized to support the implementation of artificial neural networks. From this derives the name NeuroMatrix Core (NMC). Newer devices contain multiple DSP cores and additional ARM or PowerPC 470 cores.
MediaTek Inc. is a Taiwanese fabless semiconductor company that provides chips for wireless communications, High-definition television, handheld mobile devices like smartphones and tablet computers, navigation systems, consumer multimedia products and Digital subscriber line services as well as optical disc drives.
Silicon Laboratories, Inc. is a fabless global technology company that designs and manufactures semiconductors, other silicon devices and software, which it sells to electronics design engineers and manufacturers in Internet of Things (IoT) infrastructure, industrial automation, consumer and automotive markets worldwide.
Mindspeed Technologies, Inc. designs, develops and sells semiconductors for communications applications in wireless and wired networks.
