hardware//chip
A chip is a monolithic piece of silicon carrying integrated circuits. Three families differ in how much they integrate:
A chip is a monolithic piece of silicon carrying integrated circuits. Three families differ in how much they integrate:
An MCU (microcontroller) puts a CPU, memory and peripherals on one die.
An MPU (microprocessor) is a CPU only and needs external memory.
A SoC (system-on-chip) integrates heterogeneous blocks: CPU, GPU, NPU and modems.
The line between them blurs as integration density rises with each fab node shrink.