DSPs are targeted at signal processing. Consequently they generally run faster than microcontrollers and often have fewer built-in peripherals although most have sophisticated serial protocol hardware (UART, SPI, I2C etc).

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What sets DSPs apart is that their architecture allows for faster computation using logic optimised for arithmetic, particularly data in vector format.

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Enhancements include SIMD (instructions that can work on multiple sets of data at the same time), fast DMA transfers, high-speed cache memory, dedicated hardware computations blocks etc). This makes them particularly suitable for Fourier transforms, digital filters, image processing etc.

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There are some microcontrollers with built-in enhancements, particularly hardware multipliers and sometimes dividers, which help them cross the performance gap towards the lower spec DSPs. ARM Cortex M4s and Microchip's dsPICS are an example.

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Steve has particular experience with Analog Devices' Blackfin, SHARC (including 3-core devices with built in FFT hardware) and dsPICs.

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As DSPs tend to have more internal memory, external memory busses and faster clocks, it can be easier to use them with real-time operating systems.

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Steve has been writing software for these since 2005 in C and C++.