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Can one of you clever people explain what is meant by the term "system on a chip"? Is it just a marketing buzzword, or is there more to it than that? I've trie

• jdabney 16y ago
  A system on a chip is a single chip that integrates all or almost all other chips on a motherboard into one chip. So this chip will have a cpu, graphics, memory controller, network controller, io such as usb. That way you can have basically one chip that is all or most of the computer. Sometime RAM and normally storage is separate chips but you basically end up with just a few chips on a very small, normally low power motherboard. It is great for system integrators as they don't need to spend as much development time to build new machines.
  • jmtulloss 16y ago
    It's also great for power and size constraints.
• forgottenpaswrd 16y ago
  Instead of having a motherboard with the RAM, CPU, GPU on different components, you integrate them on a single die or chip. It is going to cost you a lot of money to do it right(you can use multiples dies inside a die but the real thing is just using one single die), but if you can sell enough(like Apple) you win on price per unit, reliability, mount cost, size volume and weight.