Counting and Correcting 217 A smaller scale version of ASIC is the application-specific standard product (ASSP). This is closer to a general-purpose IC, but the technology is closely based on that for ASICs. SoC SoC means system on a chip, and it is a single chip of the ASIC or ASSP type that contains all the components and connections of a complex system (such as a computer with microprocessor or microcontroller, memory, peripherals, logic, etc.) into a single integrated circuit. This need not be an all-digital system, because the SoC may contain analog processing and even radio frequencies; an example is the SoC used for digital audio broadcasting (DAB) radio receivers. Memory Chips Microcontrollers often include memory actions, but microprocessors are more likely to need separate memory chips, because for computing purposes memory sizes in the region of 1 GB are now almost a minimum requirement. This type of memory is called random access memory (RAM) and we will deal with it in Chapter 13. RAM is memory that retains data only while power is applied, but most microprocessor