What is an application specific processor?
An application specific processor is a processor designed to efficiently handle one or a limited set of applications.
In contrast, general purpose processors are designed to be able to be used for a wide range of applications and often are aimed to be used with an operating system. General purpose processor cores handle specific applications less efficently than an a processor specialized for those applications.
Application specific processors are designed after analyzing the software workload required for their target application. Their instruction set and microarchitecture is optimized for that workload meaning that the processor delivers good performance at a competitive silicon area and power consumption.
The meaning of application specific processors overlaps with that of domain specific processors.