general purpose processor (GPP)

A general purpose processor (GPP) is a universal processor that can be used in personalcomputers(PCs) or in workstations and can be used for general computer applications.

In GPP processors all possible techniques are implemented to achieve a high computing speed. This is much higher than that of microcontrollers. To achieve this, for example, the chips of general-purpose processors contain caches with multi- layer, fast memory access, which can be used to increase the processing speed. The high computing speeds also allow them to be used for real-time applications. Since the processors have superscalar structures, instructions are processed in parallel. An example of a GPP processor is the Central Processing Unit( CPU).

The difference between a General Purpose Processor (GPP) and a Single Purpose Processor is that the architecture of a Single Purpose Processor is optimized for a specific application and has a high performance for this application. Examples of this are the Graphics Processing Unit( GPU), Numerical Processing Unit( NPU), Network Processor Unit (NPU). Audio Processing Unit( APU) and the DigitalSignal Processor( DSP).