PRODUCT HOW-TO: Increase embedded processor efficiency through the use of distributed processing blocks

By Loren Hobbs, Cypress Semiconductor
Embedded.com (11/23/09, 11:13:00 PM EST)

In then the past few years we have seen multiprocessing systems become more mainstream, in fact most modern personal computer CPU's now feature symmetric multiprocessing systems (SMP), where multiple instantiations of the same processor share the processing burden of the applications running on the PC.

While SMP's are quite common today, we typically have not seen a shift towards multiprocessing in embedded computing. However, a new type of embedded design technique gives engineers the freedom to intelligently distribute processing functions across a digital subsystem.

This article will look at an example of the distributed processing technique using Cypress Semiconductor's PSoC 3 and PSoC 5 architectures, which consist of a main CPU (in this case an 8051 or ARM Cortex M3), a DMA engine, and array of Universal Digital Blocks (UDB).

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