Special-purpose Designs
A microprocessor is a general purpose system. Several specialized processing devices have followed from the technology. Microcontrollers integrate a microprocessor with peripheral devices for control of embedded system. A digital signal processor (DSP) is specialized for signal processing. Graphics processing units may have no, limited, or general programming facilities. For example, GPUs through the 1990s were mostly non-programmable and have only recently gained limited facilities like programmable vertex shaders.
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