For some, the very idea of ditching their smartphone might seem impossibe, but for MacNeil, a Grade 11 student at École secondaire publique De La Salle, it was necessary.
Cell phones have to handle telecommunications and audiovisual processing while maximizing battery life. Digital Signal Processors, or DSPs, use specialized hardware to offload these tasks from the CPU which lowers power usage. From an old Qualcomm presentation on Snapdragon 800, showing Hexagon's evolution. Note the large blocks of L2/TCM SRAM Qualcomm's Hexagon has a long…