Do you know what's inside your smartphone or tablet? This is the home of a SoC also known as System on a Chip . It's quite powerful, more than any desktop processor in the 90s or early 2000s, which shows how far technology has come since then. These tiny but powerful chips are surprisingly very energy efficient and become even more so over time. That's why smartphones today can play video games with high-quality graphics and even perform basic video editing in quick succession.
ContentsWhat is a System on a Chip (SoC)Which company created the first SoC?What is a SoC made of?Examples of System on a ChipWhat is Intel System on a Chip?
As stated above, the term SoC stands for System on a Chip. It is the name given due to the integration of several computer components all mounted on a single chip. Until now, SoCs, due to their small size, are mainly used for mobile devices.
Back in 1974, the folks at Intel released a digital watch called the Microma Digital Watch, and from what we've gathered, it's the first commercial device to have a SoC inside. Fast forward to the 1990s and several cell phones have an SoC inside, but these tiny chips really took off with the advent of the smartphone.
Because smartphones and tablets are quite small, all the essential components had to be on a single die, and that's how the SoC came about. Unlike a typical home computer, there is no motherboard with components everywhere as designers had to save space. SoC is an integrated circuit that combines various functions of a computer system into a single chip.
As it stands, SoCs are no longer exclusive to small form factor computers. The Apple M1 chip is proof of this, since several of the company's newer computers are equipped with it. And from what the reviews are saying, the M1 chip is quite powerful.
There's a good chance that System on a Chip technology will be the future of commercial and enterprise computing, and that's something we can support.
You'll tend to find System on a Chip hardware in embedded systems such as smartphones, tablets, and devices used for the Internet of Things, to name a few. This setup is different from the traditional motherboard-based PC architecture we've grown accustomed to over the decades.
Intel has its own form of SoC, and it's called the Intel® NUC or Next Computer Unit . From what we've seen, NUCs are small computers that are quite capable for their size.