Question

Describe a domain specific processor.

Answer 1

Description of a Domain-Specific Processor:

Domain-Specific Processors depend on intentions of concurrency and parallelism achieving performance, working within cost constraints, resulting from increasingly complex applications and architectures, and addressing concepts in the specification, simulation, and verification in embedded systems and software design. In general, Domain-Specific Processors are used in Systems, Architectures, Modeling, and Simulation.

The core of embedded systems is such that, embedded systems are domain-specific and are built around a central core. Hence, the core of the embedded system could fall in Domain-Specific Processors category, where almost 80% of the embedded systems are processor or controller-based. Thus, the processor could a microcontroller or digital signal processor, depending on the domain. Microcontrollers are also designed for domain-specific application requirement. Also, the Commercial-Off-The-Shelf (COTs) components could also be developed around a domain-specific processor.

Domain-specific is one of the characteristics of an embedded system making it different from a general-purpose computer. Certain embedded systems are specific to a domain. For example, a hearing aid is an appliance belonging to the domain of signal processing.

Also, it is designed for a specific purpose only, not doing any other task. For example like a microwave oven would only heat the food or cook but not wash clothes.

Domain-specific processors could be used either in Microcontrollers or Digital Signal Processors (DSPs). For example, a DSP processor is a processor designed specifically for signal processing tasks.