Digital
Signal Processing is carried out by mathematical operations. Digital Signal Processors
are microprocessors specifically designed to handle Digital Signal Processing
tasks. These devices have seen tremendous growth in the last decade, finding use
in everything from cellular telephones to advanced scientific instruments. In
fact, hardware engineers use "DSP" to mean Digital Signal Processor,
just as algorithm developers use "DSP" to mean Digital Signal Processing.
DSP has become a key component in many consumer, communications, medical, and
industrial products. These products use a variety of hardware approaches to implement
DSP, ranging from the use of off-the-shelf microprocessors to field-programmable
gate arrays (FPGAs) to custom integrated circuits (ICs). Programmable "DSP
processors," a class of microprocessors optimized for DSP, are a popular
solution for several reasons. In comparison to fixed-function solutions, they
have the advantage of potentially being reprogrammed in the field, allowing product
upgrades or fixes. They are often more cost-effective than custom hardware, particularly
for low-volume applications, where the development cost of ICs may be prohibitive.
DSP processors often have an advantage in terms of speed, cost, and energy efficiency.
From the outset, DSP algorithms have moulded DSP processor architectures. For
nearly every feature found in a DSP processor, there are associated DSP algorithms
whose computation is in some way eased by inclusion of this feature. Therefore,
perhaps the best way to understand the evolution of DSP architectures is to examine
typical DSP algorithms and identify how their computational requirements have
influenced the architectures of DSP processors.