The ECU+ is built on an advanced digital signal processing "chip" from Texas Instruments, the world's leader in DSP. With DSP, the ECU+ internally uses signal processing technology that's normally used inside of cell phones, MP3 players, and products like the Segway.

Some features of the ECU+'s internal architecture include:

• High-speed signal processing architecture at the center of the ECU+.
• Includes a separate microcontroller to handle the OBD-II and MUT-II interface, thus keeping the engine processing functionality separate from the MUT-II logging. Compare this to some "logger" devices, which require a Pentium IV just to do logging. These "loggers" also bog down your stock ECU with data requests, eating up CPU time that the stock ECU could be using to, you know, run your engine.
• Dedicated processor for handling the knock signal. This includes knock filtering and per-cylinder filtering. There are essentially zero other engine management systems that include this function at all. The ECU+'s knock sensor input has a very high impedance, so the ECU+ won't load down the knock sensor like some devices that use a regular analog input.
• High speed analog to digital conversion, with 10 bits of resolution. That's 0.005 volts of resolution on all analog signals. This is 4x the resolution of most devices.
• Hardware-based signal input conditioning.
• Hardware rear O2 sensor generation - no extra overhead on the main DSP microprocessor.
• All DSP software is written in 100% hand-coded assembly language.
• Includes several spare analog and digital I/O pins for future expansion.

The ECU+ is a real hardware device. As such, it can't compete in price with ROM tuning and slow OBD-II logging software. However, this also means that the ECU+ can do things that software-based devices can never do. Let's say you have an extra analog device that you'd like to log with a ROM tuning device. No-can-do, since the stock ECU doesn't include any extra inputs. With the ECU+, you just hook it in.

One other thing about the ECU+'s fast DSP processing. As of version 2.10 of the ECU+ firmware, the device is using just under 2% of the available processing time. That's two percent. Why's this significant? Because the ECU+ still has lots and lots of leftover capacity for new features. Unlike many other systems, which are maxed-out when you get them, the ECU+ is poised and ready for lots more features in the near future.