1.2.2.2 Analog Compute Engine (ACE)

The mixed signal blocks found in SmartFusion cSoCs are controlled and connected to the rest of the system via a dedicated processor called the Analog Compute Engine (ACE). The role of the ACE is to offload control of the analog blocks from the Cortex-M3, thus offering faster throughput or better power consumption compared to a system where the main processor is in charge of monitoring the analog resources. The ACE is built to handle sampling, sequencing, and post-processing of the ADCs, DACs, and SCBs.