Direct memory access (DMA)
also: DMA
A hardware feature that moves data between peripherals and memory without the processor, freeing it for other work and reducing power.
Moving a stream of data from an ADC, serial port, audio codec or display one byte at a time through the CPU wastes time and energy. A DMA controller does the copying in the background and signals when a block is done. That is how small microcontrollers sample sensors quickly, drive displays and handle communication while still running control loops on time.
Where it bites: DMA setup is chip-specific and easy to get subtly wrong. Buffers can be overwritten while code is still reading them, caches on larger chips can serve stale data, and DMA channels are a limited resource that must be shared out across peripherals early in the design.
Founder takeaway
If the product handles continuous data streams, confirm early that the chosen chip has enough DMA channels and bandwidth to run them all at once.
engineer review pending