Digital signal processing

TLDR

Semiconductor industry growth has historically followed market demands, with the PC market and its microprocessors and memory chips driving early development, but the rising need to digitally process analog signals such as audio and video is now shifting the focus toward DSP technologies. DSP requires specialized mathematical circuitry to efficiently manipulate digitized signals, a capability that has expanded beyond traditional DSP chips. Consequently, DSP has become the dominant technology driver for the semiconductor industry, reflected in its rapid market growth and the enthusiasm of chip vendors to launch new DSP‑based products.

Abstract

Markets have always influenced the central thrust of the semiconductor industry. Beginning in the early eighties, the personal computer (PC) market has been the dominant market influencing the semiconductor industry. Single-chip microprocessors (MPUs) enabled what became the huge PC market, which ultimately overshadowed the earlier minicomputer and mainframe computer markets. The popularity of PCs led to investments in increasingly more powerful MPUs and memory chips of ever-growing capacity. MPUs and DRAMs became the semiconductor industry technology drivers for the data processing needs of the PC. But now, DSP, as opposed to conventional data processing, has become the major technology driver for the semiconductor industry as evidenced by its market growth and the fervour of chip vendors to provide new products based on DSP technology. The increasing need to digitally process analog information signals, like audio and video, is causing a major shift in the semiconductor business. Since DSP is the mathematical manipulation of those digitized information signals, specialized math circuitry is required for efficient signal processing-circuitry that was previously confined to classical DSP chips.