Processor - Processing Unit (PU) - Processing Element (PE)
- is an integrated circuit that performs operations on some external data source, usually memory or some other data stream
- the term is frequently referred to as CPU but typical computer systems (especially SoCs) combine a number of specialized “processors”
- is an implementation of Computer Organization - Microarchitecture
Processor Unit - General Purpose
- CPU - central processing unit
- If designed conforming to the von Neumann architecture, it contains at least a control unit (CU), arithmetic logic unit (ALU), and processor registers.
- In some contexts, the ALU and registers are called the processing unit
Processor Unit - Application-Specific
Application-Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC) processor units:
- APU - Accelerated Processing Unit
- DPU - Data Processing Unit
- GPU - graphics processing unit
- TPU - tensor processing unit
- NPU - neural processing unit
- VPU - vision processing unit
- PPU - physics processing unit
- DSP - digital signal processor
- ISP - image signal processor
- SPU or SPE - synergistic processing element in the Cell microprocessor