electronics//chip

Monolithic piece of silicon carrying integrated circuits.

Monolithic piece of silicon carrying integrated circuits.

MCU — microcontroller: CPU + memory + peripherals on one die.

MPU — microprocessor: CPU only, needs external memory.

SoC — system-on-chip: heterogeneous integration of CPU, GPU, NPU, modems.

The line between them blurs as integration density rises with each fab node shrink.