A DSP is a Digital Signal Processor, which acts as the brains of the modem's operations, handling the routing of data to, from, and around the modem. The DSP is the chip that does the actual modulation and demodulation. With software-driven modems, the DSP is taken off of the modem, and the job is handled by the CPU and a set of software instructions. A driver is necessary to act as translater between the modem's language and the computer's. For this reason, modems without dsp's are referred to as "software" modems.
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