Digital Signal Processors Until now we have assumed that all the computation necessary for DSP applications could be performed either using pencil and paper or by a generalpurpose computer. Obviously, those that can be handled by human calculation are either very simplistic or at least very low rate. It might surprise the uninitiated that general-purpose computers suffer from the same limitations. Being ‘general-purpose’, a conventional central processing unit (CPU) is not optimized for DSP-styl