Digital Signal Processor
Recently, many major breakthroughs are changing the face of science and engineering in the twenty-first century. One of these most powerful technologies is the "Digital Signal Processing", or "DSP".
The roots of DSP are in the 1960s and 1970s when digital computers first became available. In 1978 Intel released their first analog signal processor, which did not have a hardware multiplier. Then in 1979, AMI released their microprocessor, which had to be initialized by the host. However, both were unsuccessful in the market. Afterwards, Bell Labs introduced their first single chip DSP in 1979 followed by the first stand-alone, complete DSPs, which were presented at the IEEE International Conference in 1980. Then came the first DSP produced by Texas Instruments presented in 1983, and proved to be an even bigger success because It was based on the Harvard architecture, and so had separate instruction and data memory. About five years later, the second generation of DSPs began to spread, which were even better in the fact that they had three memories, hardware acceleration, and an addressing unit for loops. After awhile came the third generation, which has a special unit that handles complex mathematical problems, like the Fourier-transform or matrix operations. Last but not least, the fourth generation appeared with more improvement in the instruction set and the instruction encoding/decoding as well as having the first superscalar architecture.
DSPs were invented because they are the best opportunities in the semiconductor industry since the invention of the integrated circuit. These technologies are growing rapidly due to the fact that they provide processing power, the essential link between digital devices, and the real world of light, sound, heat and motion.
At first, DSP was limited to only a few critical applications. Pioneering efforts were made in four key areas: radar & sonar, where national security was at...