Dual core chips are ICs with two CPUs. Another term for this is dual processor.There two major types according to applications. One is for server applications. The other type is for DSP applications.

Dual core chips for Server applications

These dual core chips for server applications are designed for load balancing and superior scalability. Among the more famous dual core chip for server applications is the Xeon processor which is designed for multithreading processing which is called Hyperthreading by Intel. Another type of dual core server chip is the 2H05 to be launched in 2005 by AMD.

Dual core chips for DSP applications

Typically the dual core chips are a combination of an ARM RISC CPU and the DSP MPU. A major application of these dual core chips are mobile phones. The RISC processor is where the OS is loaded and for general user interface applications. In the early days, the RISC processor controlled the DSP. As cell phones become more sophisticated especially in signal processing, the DSP gradually increased in autonomy or less control from the RISC CPU.

The pioneering leader for mobile phone DSP chips is Texas Instruments, with its most popular core in 2G phones is one of the company's 320C54xx devices. Typical mobile phone DSP applications include MPEGs, voice and audio and other multimedia processing. A major development in DSP technology was the development of the Micro Signal Architechiture(MSA) which was jointly developed by Analog Devices and Intel.

Reference

• Dual Caches