Soc ( System on Chip)
Soc is an integrated circuit (IC) that integrates all components of a computer or otherelectronic system into a single chip. It may contain digital, analog, mixed-signal, and often radio-frequency functions—all on a single chipsubstrate. SoCs are very common in the mobile electronics market because of their low power consumption. A typical application is in the area of embedded systems.
A typical SoC consists of:
- a microcontroller, microprocessor or digital signal processor (DSP) core – multiprocessor SoCs (MPSoC) have more than one processor core
- memory blocks including a selection of ROM, RAM, EEPROM and flash memory
- timing sources including oscillators and phase-locked loops
- peripherals including counter-timers, real-time timers and power-on reset generators
- external interfaces, including industry standards such as USB, FireWire, Ethernet, USART, SPI
- analog interfaces including ADCs and DACs
- voltage regulators and power management circuits
A bus – either proprietary or industry-standard such as the AMBA bus from ARM Holdings – connects these blocks. DMAcontrollers route data directly between external interfaces and memory, bypassing the processor core and thereby increasing the data throughput of the SoC.
Embedded System
An embeded system is a computer system with a dedicated function within a larger mechanical or electrical system, often with real-time computing constraints. It is embedded as part of a complete device often including hardware and mechanical parts