DIGIC

Digital Imaging Integrated Circuit is Canon Inc.'s name for a family of signal processing and control units for digital cameras and camcorders. DIGIC units are used as image processors by Canon in its own digital imagery products. Several generations of DIGICs exist, and are distinguished by a version number suffix.

Currently, DIGIC is implemented as an application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) designed to perform high speed signal processing as well as the control operations in the product in which it has been incorporated. Over its numerous generations, DIGIC has evolved from a system involving a number of discrete integrated circuits to a single chip system, many of which are based around the ARM instruction set. Custom firmware for these units have been developed to add features to the cameras.

Original DIGIC

The original DIGIC was used on the PowerShot G3 (Sep 2002), Canon S1 IS (Mar 2004), A520 (Mar 2005), and other cameras. It consists of three separate chips: a video processing IC, an image processing IC and a camera control IC. .