Abstract - As far as the future of communica- tions is concerned, we have seen that there is great demand for audio and video data to complement text. Digital signal processing (DSP) is the sci- ence that enables traditionally analog audio and video signals to be processed digitally for trans- mission, storage, reproduction and manipulation. In this paper, we will explain the various DSP architectures and its silicon implementation. We will also discuss the state-of-the art and examine the issues pertaining to performance.