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86-421: The phone uses a Pega-Dual +XMM6262 SoC featuring a 1.5 GHz dualcore CPU. There is a base model, SM-C101, and a variant featuring LTE 4G, SM-C105. The S4 Zoom uses 1/2.33-inch 16 MP BSI-CMOS sensor and has both auto and manual camera control, and takes video in 1080p 30 fps (full HD) or 720p at smoother 60 fps. The device can be categorized as a low/mid-end point-and-shoot camera . In one of

172-516: A communications subsystem to connect, control, direct and interface between these functional modules. An SoC must have at least one processor core , but typically an SoC has more than one core. Processor cores can be a microcontroller , microprocessor (μP), digital signal processor (DSP) or application-specific instruction set processor (ASIP) core. ASIPs have instruction sets that are customized for an application domain and designed to be more efficient than general-purpose instructions for

258-447: A memory hierarchy and cache hierarchy . In the mobile computing market, this is common, but in many low-power embedded microcontrollers, this is not necessary. Memory technologies for SoCs include read-only memory (ROM), random-access memory (RAM), Electrically Erasable Programmable ROM ( EEPROM ) and flash memory . As in other computer systems, RAM can be subdivided into relatively faster but more expensive static RAM (SRAM) and

344-494: A microcontroller , microprocessor or perhaps several processor cores with peripherals like a GPU , Wi-Fi and cellular network radio modems or one or more coprocessors . Similar to how a microcontroller integrates a microprocessor with peripheral circuits and memory, an SoC can be seen as integrating a microcontroller with even more advanced peripherals . Compared to a multi-chip architecture, an SoC with equivalent functionality will have reduced power consumption as well as

430-660: A netlist describing the design as a physical circuit and its interconnections. These netlists are combined with the glue logic connecting the components to produce the schematic description of the SoC as a circuit which can be printed onto a chip. This process is known as place and route and precedes tape-out in the event that the SoCs are produced as application-specific integrated circuits (ASIC). SoCs must optimize power use , area on die , communication, positioning for locality between modular units and other factors. Optimization

516-534: A q HD (not to be confused with Q HD) Display with 960×540 Pixels and a pixel Density of 256 ppi. It uses Super-AMOLED-Technology, like most of Samsung 's mid-range or flagship smartphones. It is protected with Gorilla Glass 3, unlike the Gorilla Glass 2 used on the Galaxy S3 , Galaxy Note 2 and Galaxy S4 Active . The Galaxy S4 (main model) has Gorilla Glass 3 as well. In June 2014 the successor to

602-399: A semiconductor foundry . This process is called functional verification and it accounts for a significant portion of the time and energy expended in the chip design life cycle , often quoted as 70%. With the growing complexity of chips, hardware verification languages like SystemVerilog , SystemC , e , and OpenVera are being used. Bugs found in the verification stage are reported to

688-475: A bit pattern to each character , digit , or multimedia object. Many standards exist for encoding (e.g. character encodings like ASCII , image encodings like JPEG , and video encodings like MPEG-4 ). By adding bits to each encoded unit, redundancy allows the computer to detect errors in coded data and correct them based on mathematical algorithms. Errors generally occur in low probabilities due to random bit value flipping, or "physical bit fatigue", loss of

774-515: A certain level of computational performance , but power is limited in most SoC environments. SoC designs are optimized to minimize waste heat output on the chip. As with other integrated circuits , heat generated due to high power density are the bottleneck to further miniaturization of components. The power densities of high speed integrated circuits, particularly microprocessors and including SoCs, have become highly uneven. Too much waste heat can damage circuits and erode reliability of

860-527: A chip consists of both the hardware , described in § Structure , and the software controlling the microcontroller, microprocessor or digital signal processor cores, peripherals and interfaces. The design flow for an SoC aims to develop this hardware and software at the same time, also known as architectural co-design. The design flow must also take into account optimizations ( § Optimization goals ) and constraints. Most SoCs are developed from pre-qualified hardware component IP core specifications for

946-1005: A circuit is the integral of power consumed with respect to time, and the average rate of power consumption is the product of current by voltage . Equivalently, by Ohm's law , power is current squared times resistance or voltage squared divided by resistance : P = I V = V 2 R = I 2 R {\displaystyle P=IV={\frac {V^{2}}{R}}={I^{2}}{R}} SoCs are frequently embedded in portable devices such as smartphones , GPS navigation devices , digital watches (including smartwatches ) and netbooks . Customers want long battery lives for mobile computing devices, another reason that power consumption must be minimized in SoCs. Multimedia applications are often executed on these devices, including video games, video streaming , image processing ; all of which have grown in computational complexity in recent years with user demands and expectations for higher- quality multimedia. Computation

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1032-497: A computer a brief window of time to move information from primary volatile storage into non-volatile storage before the batteries are exhausted. Some systems, for example EMC Symmetrix , have integrated batteries that maintain volatile storage for several minutes. Utilities such as hdparm and sar can be used to measure IO performance in Linux. Full disk encryption , volume and virtual disk encryption, andor file/folder encryption

1118-424: A database) to represent a string of bits by a shorter bit string ("compress") and reconstruct the original string ("decompress") when needed. This utilizes substantially less storage (tens of percent) for many types of data at the cost of more computation (compress and decompress when needed). Analysis of the trade-off between storage cost saving and costs of related computations and possible delays in data availability

1204-866: A different processor. For further discussion of multi-processing memory issues, see cache coherence and memory latency . SoCs include external interfaces , typically for communication protocols . These are often based upon industry standards such as USB , Ethernet , USART , SPI , HDMI , I²C , CSI , etc. These interfaces will differ according to the intended application. Wireless networking protocols such as Wi-Fi , Bluetooth , 6LoWPAN and near-field communication may also be supported. When needed, SoCs include analog interfaces including analog-to-digital and digital-to-analog converters , often for signal processing . These may be able to interface with different types of sensors or actuators , including smart transducers . They may interface with application-specific modules or shields. Or they may be internal to

1290-439: A discrete application processor). High-performance SoCs are often paired with dedicated and physically separate memory and secondary storage (such as LPDDR and eUFS or eMMC , respectively) chips that may be layered on top of the SoC in what is known as a package on package (PoP) configuration, or be placed close to the SoC. Additionally, SoCs may use separate wireless modems (especially WWAN modems). An SoC integrates

1376-702: A drive. When the computer has finished reading the information, the robotic arm will return the medium to its place in the library. Tertiary storage is also known as nearline storage because it is "near to online". The formal distinction between online, nearline, and offline storage is: For example, always-on spinning hard disk drives are online storage, while spinning drives that spin down automatically, such as in massive arrays of idle disks ( MAID ), are nearline storage. Removable media such as tape cartridges that can be automatically loaded, as in tape libraries , are nearline storage, while tape cartridges that must be manually loaded are offline storage. Off-line storage

1462-464: A manner independent of time scales, which are typically specified in HDL. Other components can remain software and be compiled and embedded onto soft-core processors included in the SoC as modules in HDL as IP cores . Once the architecture of the SoC has been defined, any new hardware elements are written in an abstract hardware description language termed register transfer level (RTL) which defines

1548-486: A power source while needing to maintain autonomous function, and often are limited in power use by a high number of embedded SoCs being networked together in an area. Additionally, energy costs can be high and conserving energy will reduce the total cost of ownership of the SoC. Finally, waste heat from high energy consumption can damage other circuit components if too much heat is dissipated, giving another pragmatic reason to conserve energy. The amount of energy used in

1634-400: A relatively simple processor may keep state between successive computations to build up complex procedural results. Most modern computers are von Neumann machines. A modern digital computer represents data using the binary numeral system . Text, numbers, pictures, audio, and nearly any other form of information can be converted into a string of bits , or binary digits, each of which has

1720-464: A smaller semiconductor die area. This comes at the cost of reduced replaceability of components. By definition, SoC designs are fully or nearly fully integrated across different component modules . For these reasons, there has been a general trend towards tighter integration of components in the computer hardware industry , in part due to the influence of SoCs and lessons learned from the mobile and embedded computing markets. SoCs are very common in

1806-495: A software integrated development environment . SoCs components are also often designed in high-level programming languages such as C++ , MATLAB or SystemC and converted to RTL designs through high-level synthesis (HLS) tools such as C to HDL or flow to HDL . HLS products called "algorithmic synthesis" allow designers to use C++ to model and synthesize system, circuit, software and verification levels all in one high level language commonly known to computer engineers in

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1892-574: A source to read instructions from, in order to start the computer. Hence, non-volatile primary storage containing a small startup program ( BIOS ) is used to bootstrap the computer, that is, to read a larger program from non-volatile secondary storage to RAM and start to execute it. A non-volatile technology used for this purpose is called ROM, for read-only memory (the terminology may be somewhat confusing as most ROM types are also capable of random access ). Many types of "ROM" are not literally read only , as updates to them are possible; however it

1978-429: A specific type of workload. Multiprocessor SoCs have more than one processor core by definition. The ARM architecture is a common choice for SoC processor cores because some ARM-architecture cores are soft processors specified as IP cores . SoCs must have semiconductor memory blocks to perform their computation, as do microcontrollers and other embedded systems . Depending on the application, SoC memory may form

2064-490: A value of 0 or 1. The most common unit of storage is the byte , equal to 8 bits. A piece of information can be handled by any computer or device whose storage space is large enough to accommodate the binary representation of the piece of information , or simply data . For example, the complete works of Shakespeare , about 1250 pages in print, can be stored in about five megabytes (40 million bits) with one byte per character. Data are encoded by assigning

2150-427: Is a form of volatile memory that also requires the stored information to be periodically reread and rewritten, or refreshed , otherwise it would vanish. Static random-access memory is a form of volatile memory similar to DRAM with the exception that it never needs to be refreshed as long as power is applied; it loses its content when the power supply is lost. An uninterruptible power supply (UPS) can be used to give

2236-425: Is a level below secondary storage. Typically, it involves a robotic mechanism which will mount (insert) and dismount removable mass storage media into a storage device according to the system's demands; such data are often copied to secondary storage before use. It is primarily used for archiving rarely accessed information since it is much slower than secondary storage (e.g. 5–60 seconds vs. 1–10 milliseconds). This

2322-410: Is a technology consisting of computer components and recording media that are used to retain digital data . It is a core function and fundamental component of computers. The central processing unit (CPU) of a computer is what manipulates data by performing computations. In practice, almost all computers use a storage hierarchy , which puts fast but expensive and small storage options close to

2408-578: Is an integrated circuit that integrates most or all components of a computer or electronic system . These components usually include an on-chip central processing unit (CPU), memory interfaces, input/output devices and interfaces, and secondary storage interfaces, often alongside other components such as radio modems and a graphics processing unit (GPU) – all on a single substrate or microchip. SoCs may contain digital and also analog , mixed-signal and often radio frequency signal processing functions (otherwise it may be considered on

2494-410: Is computer data storage on a medium or a device that is not under the control of a processing unit . The medium is recorded, usually in a secondary or tertiary storage device, and then physically removed or disconnected. It must be inserted or connected by a human operator before a computer can access it again. Unlike tertiary storage, it cannot be accessed without human interaction. Off-line storage

2580-408: Is done before deciding whether to keep certain data compressed or not. For security reasons , certain types of data (e.g. credit card information) may be kept encrypted in storage to prevent the possibility of unauthorized information reconstruction from chunks of storage snapshots. Generally, the lower a storage is in the hierarchy, the lesser its bandwidth and the greater its access latency

2666-609: Is estimable using S.M.A.R.T. diagnostic data that includes the hours of operation and the count of spin-ups, though its reliability is disputed. Flash storage may experience downspiking transfer rates as a result of accumulating errors, which the flash memory controller attempts to correct. The health of optical media can be determined by measuring correctable minor errors , of which high counts signify deteriorating and/or low-quality media. Too many consecutive minor errors can lead to data corruption. Not all vendors and models of optical drives support error scanning. As of 2011 ,

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2752-1115: Is from the CPU. This traditional division of storage to primary, secondary, tertiary, and off-line storage is also guided by cost per bit. In contemporary usage, memory is usually fast but temporary semiconductor read-write memory , typically DRAM (dynamic RAM) or other such devices. Storage consists of storage devices and their media not directly accessible by the CPU ( secondary or tertiary storage ), typically hard disk drives , optical disc drives, and other devices slower than RAM but non-volatile (retaining contents when powered down). Historically, memory has, depending on technology, been called central memory , core memory , core storage , drum , main memory , real storage , or internal memory . Meanwhile, slower persistent storage devices have been referred to as secondary storage , external memory , or auxiliary/peripheral storage . Primary storage (also known as main memory , internal memory , or prime memory ), often referred to simply as memory ,

2838-492: Is more demanding as expectations move towards 3D video at high resolution with multiple standards , so SoCs performing multimedia tasks must be computationally capable platform while being low power to run off a standard mobile battery. SoCs are optimized to maximize power efficiency in performance per watt: maximize the performance of the SoC given a budget of power usage. Many applications such as edge computing , distributed processing and ambient intelligence require

2924-780: Is necessarily a design goal of SoCs. If optimization was not necessary, the engineers would use a multi-chip module architecture without accounting for the area use, power consumption or performance of the system to the same extent. Common optimization targets for SoC designs follow, with explanations of each. In general, optimizing any of these quantities may be a hard combinatorial optimization problem, and can indeed be NP-hard fairly easily. Therefore, sophisticated optimization algorithms are often required and it may be practical to use approximation algorithms or heuristics in some cases. Additionally, most SoC designs contain multiple variables to optimize simultaneously , so Pareto efficient solutions are sought after in SoC design. Oftentimes

3010-416: Is primarily useful for extraordinarily large data stores, accessed without human operators. Typical examples include tape libraries and optical jukeboxes . When a computer needs to read information from the tertiary storage, it will first consult a catalog database to determine which tape or disc contains the information. Next, the computer will instruct a robotic arm to fetch the medium and place it in

3096-713: Is readily available for most storage devices. Hardware memory encryption is available in Intel Architecture, supporting Total Memory Encryption (TME) and page granular memory encryption with multiple keys (MKTME). and in SPARC M7 generation since October 2015. Distinct types of data storage have different points of failure and various methods of predictive failure analysis . Vulnerabilities that can instantly lead to total loss are head crashing on mechanical hard drives and failure of electronic components on flash storage. Impending failure on hard disk drives

3182-491: Is slow and memory must be erased in large portions before it can be re-written. Some embedded systems run programs directly from ROM (or similar), because such programs are rarely changed. Standard computers do not store non-rudimentary programs in ROM, and rather, use large capacities of secondary storage, which is non-volatile as well, and not as costly. Recently, primary storage and secondary storage in some uses refer to what

3268-442: Is the only one directly accessible to the CPU. The CPU continuously reads instructions stored there and executes them as required. Any data actively operated on is also stored there in a uniform manner. Historically, early computers used delay lines , Williams tubes , or rotating magnetic drums as primary storage. By 1954, those unreliable methods were mostly replaced by magnetic-core memory . Core memory remained dominant until

3354-405: Is typically automatically fenced out, taken out of use by the device, and replaced with another functioning equivalent group in the device, where the corrected bit values are restored (if possible). The cyclic redundancy check (CRC) method is typically used in communications and storage for error detection . A detected error is then retried. Data compression methods allow in many cases (such as

3440-505: Is typically measured in milliseconds (thousandths of a second), while the access time per byte for primary storage is measured in nanoseconds (billionths of a second). Thus, secondary storage is significantly slower than primary storage. Rotating optical storage devices, such as CD and DVD drives, have even longer access times. Other examples of secondary storage technologies include USB flash drives , floppy disks , magnetic tape , paper tape , punched cards , and RAM disks . Once

3526-496: Is used to transfer information since the detached medium can easily be physically transported. Additionally, it is useful for cases of disaster, where, for example, a fire destroys the original data, a medium in a remote location will be unaffected, enabling disaster recovery . Off-line storage increases general information security since it is physically inaccessible from a computer, and data confidentiality or integrity cannot be affected by computer-based attack techniques. Also, if

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3612-895: The bottlenecks of bus-based networks. Networks-on-chip have advantages including destination- and application-specific routing , greater power efficiency and reduced possibility of bus contention . Network-on-chip architectures take inspiration from communication protocols like TCP and the Internet protocol suite for on-chip communication, although they typically have fewer network layers . Optimal network-on-chip network architectures are an ongoing area of much research interest. NoC architectures range from traditional distributed computing network topologies such as torus , hypercube , meshes and tree networks to genetic algorithm scheduling to randomized algorithms such as random walks with branching and randomized time to live (TTL). Many SoC researchers consider NoC architectures to be

3698-476: The disk read/write head on HDDs reaches the proper placement and the data, subsequent data on the track are very fast to access. To reduce the seek time and rotational latency, data are transferred to and from disks in large contiguous blocks. Sequential or block access on disks is orders of magnitude faster than random access, and many sophisticated paradigms have been developed to design efficient algorithms based on sequential and block access. Another way to reduce

3784-529: The mobile computing (as in smart devices such as smartphones and tablet computers ) and edge computing markets. In general, there are three distinguishable types of SoCs: SoCs can be applied to any computing task. However, they are typically used in mobile computing such as tablets, smartphones, smartwatches, and netbooks as well as embedded systems and in applications where previously microcontrollers would be used. Where previously only microcontrollers could be used, SoCs are rising to prominence in

3870-690: The 1970s, when advances in integrated circuit technology allowed semiconductor memory to become economically competitive. This led to modern random-access memory (RAM). It is small-sized, light, but quite expensive at the same time. The particular types of RAM used for primary storage are volatile , meaning that they lose the information when not powered. Besides storing opened programs, it serves as disk cache and write buffer to improve both reading and writing performance. Operating systems borrow RAM capacity for caching so long as it's not needed by running software. Spare memory can be utilized as RAM drive for temporary high-speed data storage. As shown in

3956-501: The CPU and slower but less expensive and larger options further away. Generally, the fast technologies are referred to as "memory", while slower persistent technologies are referred to as "storage". Even the first computer designs, Charles Babbage 's Analytical Engine and Percy Ludgate 's Analytical Machine, clearly distinguished between processing and memory (Babbage stored numbers as rotations of gears, while Ludgate stored numbers as displacements of rods in shuttles). This distinction

4042-492: The FPGA RTL that make signals available for observation. This is used to debug hardware, firmware and software interactions across multiple FPGAs with capabilities similar to a logic analyzer. In parallel, the hardware elements are grouped and passed through a process of logic synthesis , during which performance constraints, such as operational frequency and expected signal delays, are applied. This generates an output known as

4128-630: The Galaxy S4 Zoom, the Galaxy K Zoom model (SM-C115) - also known as Galaxy S5 Zoom - was released. It comes with a 10x zoom camera (24-240mm) with 20.7 megapixels, with Android 4.4.2. The Galaxy K Zoom also utilizes the letter 'K' for "Kapture" or "Kamera" . Its slogan is " Capture the Moment ". Its removable polycarbonate rear cover has the same dotted pattern as the Galaxy S5 , and it shares

4214-511: The I/O bottleneck is to use multiple disks in parallel to increase the bandwidth between primary and secondary memory. Secondary storage is often formatted according to a file system format, which provides the abstraction necessary to organize data into files and directories , while also providing metadata describing the owner of a certain file, the access time, the access permissions, and other information. Most computer operating systems use

4300-648: The Scene modes, the user can set the exposure time, the ISO light sensitivity (up to ISO 3200), the aperture and the white balance manually, which the main Galaxy S4 variant lacks. It can record slow motion videos at 768×512 pixels at 120 frames per second, compared to 800×450 on the main Galaxy S4 and 720×480 on the Galaxy Note 2 at that frame rate. Slow motion video is recorded without audio track. One can also use

4386-737: The SoC, if needed. Popular time sources are crystal oscillators and phase-locked loops . SoC peripherals including counter -timers, real-time timers and power-on reset generators. SoCs also include voltage regulators and power management circuits. SoCs comprise many execution units . These units must often send data and instructions back and forth. Because of this, all but the most trivial SoCs require communications subsystems . Originally, as with other microcomputer technologies, data bus architectures were used, but recently designs based on sparse intercommunication networks known as networks-on-chip (NoC) have risen to prominence and are forecast to overtake bus architectures for SoC design in

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4472-1228: The SoC, such as if an analog sensor is built in to the SoC and its readings must be converted to digital signals for mathematical processing. Digital signal processor (DSP) cores are often included on SoCs. They perform signal processing operations in SoCs for sensors , actuators , data collection , data analysis and multimedia processing. DSP cores typically feature very long instruction word (VLIW) and single instruction, multiple data (SIMD) instruction set architectures , and are therefore highly amenable to exploiting instruction-level parallelism through parallel processing and superscalar execution . SP cores most often feature application-specific instructions, and as such are typically application-specific instruction set processors (ASIP). Such application-specific instructions correspond to dedicated hardware functional units that compute those instructions. Typical DSP instructions include multiply-accumulate , Fast Fourier transform , fused multiply-add , and convolutions . As with other computer systems, SoCs require timing sources to generate clock signals , control execution of SoC functions and provide time context to signal processing applications of

4558-570: The ability to separate focus and exposure areas. A disadvantage in comparison to the S4 Zoom is that one can't use the Optical Zoom, while recording Slow Motion Videos. The new design of the K Zoom also removed the camera tripod screw thread and the rotary ring around the zoom lens. System on a chip A system on a chip or system-on-chip ( SoC / ˌ ˈ ɛ s oʊ s iː / ; pl. SoCs / ˌ ˈ ɛ s oʊ s iː z / )

4644-427: The circuit behavior, or synthesized into RTL from a high level language through high-level synthesis. These elements are connected together in a hardware description language to create the full SoC design. The logic specified to connect these components and convert between possibly different interfaces provided by different vendors is called glue logic . Chips are verified for validation correctness before being sent to

4730-435: The circuit over time. High temperatures and thermal stress negatively impact reliability, stress migration , decreased mean time between failures , electromigration , wire bonding , metastability and other performance degradation of the SoC over time. In particular, most SoCs are in a small physical area or volume and therefore the effects of waste heat are compounded because there is little room for it to diffuse out of

4816-524: The concept of virtual memory , allowing the utilization of more primary storage capacity than is physically available in the system. As the primary memory fills up, the system moves the least-used chunks ( pages ) to a swap file or page file on secondary storage, retrieving them later when needed. If a lot of pages are moved to slower secondary storage, the system performance is degraded. The secondary storage, including HDD , ODD and SSD , are usually block-addressable. Tertiary storage or tertiary memory

4902-532: The data throughput of the SoC. This is similar to some device drivers of peripherals on component-based multi-chip module PC architectures. Wire delay is not scalable due to continued miniaturization , system performance does not scale with the number of cores attached, the SoC's operating frequency must decrease with each additional core attached for power to be sustainable, and long wires consume large amounts of electrical power. These challenges are prohibitive to supporting manycore systems on chip. In

4988-676: The designer. Traditionally, engineers have employed simulation acceleration, emulation or prototyping on reprogrammable hardware to verify and debug hardware and software for SoC designs prior to the finalization of the design, known as tape-out . Field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) are favored for prototyping SoCs because FPGA prototypes are reprogrammable, allow debugging and are more flexible than application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs). With high capacity and fast compilation time, simulation acceleration and emulation are powerful technologies that provide wide visibility into systems. Both technologies, however, operate slowly, on

5074-430: The desired data to primary storage. Secondary storage is non-volatile (retaining data when its power is shut off). Modern computer systems typically have two orders of magnitude more secondary storage than primary storage because secondary storage is less expensive. In modern computers, hard disk drives (HDDs) or solid-state drives (SSDs) are usually used as secondary storage. The access time per byte for HDDs or SSDs

5160-494: The desired location of data. Then it reads or writes the data in the memory cells using the data bus. Additionally, a memory management unit (MMU) is a small device between CPU and RAM recalculating the actual memory address, for example to provide an abstraction of virtual memory or other tasks. As the RAM types used for primary storage are volatile (uninitialized at start up), a computer containing only such storage would not have

5246-400: The diagram, traditionally there are two more sub-layers of the primary storage, besides main large-capacity RAM: Main memory is directly or indirectly connected to the central processing unit via a memory bus . It is actually two buses (not on the diagram): an address bus and a data bus . The CPU firstly sends a number through an address bus, a number called memory address , that indicates

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5332-804: The embedded systems market. Tighter system integration offers better reliability and mean time between failure , and SoCs offer more advanced functionality and computing power than microcontrollers. Applications include AI acceleration , embedded machine vision , data collection , telemetry , vector processing and ambient intelligence . Often embedded SoCs target the internet of things , multimedia, networking, telecommunications and edge computing markets. Some examples of SoCs for embedded applications include: Mobile computing based SoCs always bundle processors, memories, on-chip caches , wireless networking capabilities and often digital camera hardware and firmware. With increasing memory sizes, high end SoCs will often have no memory and flash storage and instead,

5418-477: The former using standard MOSFETs and the latter using floating-gate MOSFETs . In modern computers, primary storage almost exclusively consists of dynamic volatile semiconductor random-access memory (RAM), particularly dynamic random-access memory (DRAM). Since the turn of the century, a type of non-volatile floating-gate semiconductor memory known as flash memory has steadily gained share as off-line storage for home computers. Non-volatile semiconductor memory

5504-425: The future of SoC design because they have been shown to efficiently meet power and throughput needs of SoC designs. Current NoC architectures are two-dimensional. 2D IC design has limited floorplanning choices as the number of cores in SoCs increase, so as three-dimensional integrated circuits (3DICs) emerge, SoC designers are looking towards building three-dimensional on-chip networks known as 3DNoCs. A system on

5590-512: The goals of optimizing some of these quantities are directly at odds, further adding complexity to design optimization of SoCs and introducing trade-offs in system design. For broader coverage of trade-offs and requirements analysis , see requirements engineering . SoCs are optimized to minimize the electrical power used to perform the SoC's functions. Most SoCs must use low power. SoC systems often require long battery life (such as smartphones ), can potentially spend months or years without

5676-431: The hardware elements and execution units , collectively "blocks", described above, together with software device drivers that may control their operation. Of particular importance are the protocol stacks that drive industry-standard interfaces like USB . The hardware blocks are put together using computer-aided design tools, specifically electronic design automation tools; the software modules are integrated using

5762-568: The information stored for archival purposes is rarely accessed, off-line storage is less expensive than tertiary storage. In modern personal computers, most secondary and tertiary storage media are also used for off-line storage. Optical discs and flash memory devices are the most popular, and to a much lesser extent removable hard disk drives; older examples include floppy disks and Zip disks. In enterprise uses, magnetic tape cartridges are predominant; older examples include open-reel magnetic tape and punched cards. Storage technologies at all levels of

5848-705: The interconnection delays and maximize the speed at which data is communicated between modules, functional units and memories. In general, optimizing to minimize latency is an NP-complete problem equivalent to the Boolean satisfiability problem . For tasks running on processor cores, latency and throughput can be improved with task scheduling . Some tasks run in application-specific hardware units, however, and even task scheduling may not be sufficient to optimize all software-based tasks to meet timing and throughput constraints. Computer data storage#Secondary storage Computer data storage or digital data storage

5934-482: The late 2010s, a trend of SoCs implementing communications subsystems in terms of a network-like topology instead of bus-based protocols has emerged. A trend towards more processor cores on SoCs has caused on-chip communication efficiency to become one of the key factors in determining the overall system performance and cost. This has led to the emergence of interconnection networks with router -based packet switching known as " networks on chip " (NoCs) to overcome

6020-465: The length or the size of the video, even if this video is paused. Samsung has not given a reason for this limit. The S4 Zoom has a rotary knob ring around the zoom lens that can be used for optical zooming and to launch the camera from a dedicated mode selector. The rotary ring knob can mount some compatible ring lights for macro photography. The screen has the same specifications as the S4 Mini , with

6106-598: The memory and flash memory will be placed right next to, or above ( package on package ), the SoC. Some examples of mobile computing SoCs include: In 1992, Acorn Computers produced the A3010, A3020 and A4000 range of personal computers with the ARM250 SoC. It combined the original Acorn ARM2 processor with a memory controller (MEMC), video controller (VIDC), and I/O controller (IOC). In previous Acorn ARM -powered computers, these were four discrete chips. The ARM7500 chip

6192-641: The most commonly used data storage media are semiconductor, magnetic, and optical, while paper still sees some limited usage. Some other fundamental storage technologies, such as all-flash arrays (AFAs) are proposed for development. Semiconductor memory uses semiconductor -based integrated circuit (IC) chips to store information. Data are typically stored in metal–oxide–semiconductor (MOS) memory cells . A semiconductor memory chip may contain millions of memory cells, consisting of tiny MOS field-effect transistors (MOSFETs) and/or MOS capacitors . Both volatile and non-volatile forms of semiconductor memory exist,

6278-425: The near future. Historically, a shared global computer bus typically connected the different components, also called "blocks" of the SoC. A very common bus for SoC communications is ARM's royalty-free Advanced Microcontroller Bus Architecture ( AMBA ) standard. Direct memory access controllers route data directly between external interfaces and SoC memory, bypassing the CPU or control unit , thereby increasing

6364-468: The optical zoom while recording. While recording video, at any available resolution and frame rate, the optical zoom can optionally be slowed down, to avoid recording the sound of the Zoom Lens Engine. This also applies to the succeeding Galaxy K Zoom. While recording video, one can also take still images with around 3.2 megapixels, but only up to 6 pictures during the whole recording, no matter

6450-430: The order of MHz, which may be significantly slower – up to 100 times slower – than the SoC's operating frequency. Acceleration and emulation boxes are also very large and expensive at over US$ 1 million. FPGA prototypes, in contrast, use FPGAs directly to enable engineers to validate and test at, or close to, a system's full operating frequency with real-world stimuli. Tools such as Certus are used to insert probes in

6536-408: The physical bit in the storage of its ability to maintain a distinguishable value (0 or 1), or due to errors in inter or intra-computer communication. A random bit flip (e.g. due to random radiation ) is typically corrected upon detection. A bit or a group of malfunctioning physical bits (the specific defective bit is not always known; group definition depends on the specific storage device)

6622-530: The result. It would have to be reconfigured to change its behavior. This is acceptable for devices such as desk calculators , digital signal processors , and other specialized devices. Von Neumann machines differ in having a memory in which they store their operating instructions and data. Such computers are more versatile in that they do not need to have their hardware reconfigured for each new program, but can simply be reprogrammed with new in-memory instructions; they also tend to be simpler to design, in that

6708-633: The risk of catastrophic failure . Due to increased transistor densities as length scales get smaller, each process generation produces more heat output than the last. Compounding this problem, SoC architectures are usually heterogeneous, creating spatially inhomogeneous heat fluxes , which cannot be effectively mitigated by uniform passive cooling . SoCs are optimized to maximize computational and communications throughput . SoCs are optimized to minimize latency for some or all of their functions. This can be accomplished by laying out elements with proper proximity and locality to each-other to minimize

6794-650: The same version of TouchWiz (Nature UX 3.0) . Although lacking 4K ( 2160p ) video, it supports video recording with 1080p at 60 frames per second and slow motion 720p at 120 frames per second, the latter without audio. Its camera software features a "Pro Suggest" mode that automatically suggests the appropriate camera modes for the current scene. The K Zoom has 2 GB RAM, 8 GB own flash, microSD, NFC, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.0, 4.8 inch 1280×720 px Super AMOLED (306 ppi), 6-core Exynos 5 Hexa (Exynos 5260) SoC, Mali-T624 GPU, 200 g and 20.2 millimeters at thickest point. It has additional camera controls such as

6880-458: The slower but cheaper dynamic RAM (DRAM). When an SoC has a cache hierarchy, SRAM will usually be used to implement processor registers and cores' built-in caches whereas DRAM will be used for main memory . "Main memory" may be specific to a single processor (which can be multi-core ) when the SoC has multiple processors , in this case it is distributed memory and must be sent via § Intermodule communication on-chip to be accessed by

6966-413: The storage hierarchy can be differentiated by evaluating certain core characteristics as well as measuring characteristics specific to a particular implementation. These core characteristics are volatility, mutability, accessibility, and addressability. For any particular implementation of any storage technology, the characteristics worth measuring are capacity and performance. Non-volatile memory retains

7052-422: The stored information even if not constantly supplied with electric power. It is suitable for long-term storage of information. Volatile memory requires constant power to maintain the stored information. The fastest memory technologies are volatile ones, although that is not a universal rule. Since the primary storage is required to be very fast, it predominantly uses volatile memory. Dynamic random-access memory

7138-420: The system. Because of high transistor counts on modern devices, oftentimes a layout of sufficient throughput and high transistor density is physically realizable from fabrication processes but would result in unacceptably high amounts of heat in the circuit's volume. These thermal effects force SoC and other chip designers to apply conservative design margins , creating less performant devices to mitigate

7224-467: Was extended in the Von Neumann architecture , where the CPU consists of two main parts: The control unit and the arithmetic logic unit (ALU). The former controls the flow of data between the CPU and memory, while the latter performs arithmetic and logical operations on data. Without a significant amount of memory, a computer would merely be able to perform fixed operations and immediately output

7310-441: Was historically called, respectively, secondary storage and tertiary storage . The primary storage, including ROM , EEPROM , NOR flash , and RAM , are usually byte-addressable . Secondary storage (also known as external memory or auxiliary storage ) differs from primary storage in that it is not directly accessible by the CPU. The computer usually uses its input/output channels to access secondary storage and transfer

7396-713: Was their second-generation SoC, based on the ARM700, VIDC20 and IOMD controllers, and was widely licensed in embedded devices such as set-top-boxes, as well as later Acorn personal computers. Tablet and laptop manufacturers have learned lessons from embedded systems and smartphone markets about reduced power consumption, better performance and reliability from tighter integration of hardware and firmware modules , and LTE and other wireless network communications integrated on chip (integrated network interface controllers ). An SoC consists of hardware functional units , including microprocessors that run software code , as well as

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