/diː-ɛs-piː/
n. “A specialized microprocessor designed to efficiently perform digital signal processing tasks.”
DSP, short for Digital Signal Processor, is a type of processor optimized for real-time numerical computations on signals such as audio, video, communications, and sensor data. Unlike general-purpose CPUs, DSPs include specialized hardware features like multiply-accumulate units, circular buffers, and hardware loops to accelerate mathematical operations commonly used in signal processing algorithms.
DSPs are widely used in applications requiring high-speed processing of streaming data, including audio codecs, radar systems, telecommunications, image processing, and control systems.
Key characteristics of DSP include:
- Specialized Arithmetic: Optimized for multiply-accumulate, FFTs, and filtering operations.
- Real-Time Processing: Can handle continuous data streams with low latency.
- Deterministic Execution: Predictable timing for time-sensitive applications.
- Hardware Optimization: Supports features like SIMD (Single Instruction, Multiple Data) and specialized memory architectures.
- Embedded Use: Often found in microcontrollers, audio processors, and communication devices.
Conceptual example of DSP usage:
// DSP pseudocode for audio filtering
input_signal = read_audio_stream()
filter_coeffs = design_lowpass_filter(cutoff=3kHz)
output_signal = apply_fir_filter(input_signal, filter_coeffs)
send_to_speaker(output_signal)Conceptually, a DSP is like a highly specialized mathematician embedded in hardware, continuously crunching numbers on streams of data in real-time, achieving tasks that would be inefficient on a general-purpose CPU.