A SOC may be embedded with following components:

1. Embedded processor that may be general purpose processor (GPP) or Application specific instruction set processor (ASIP).
2. Single purpose processing core or multiple processor cores.
3. A network bus protocol implementing core.
4. A encryption unit
5. Single processing unit
6. Field programmable gate array (FPGA) to implement some logical circuit.
7. Memory
8. Analog Units

A system on a chip or system on chip (SoC or SOC) is an integrated circuit (also known as an "IC" or "chip") that integrates all components of a computer or other electronic systems. It may contain digital, analog, mixed-signal, and often radio-frequency functions—all on a single substrate. SOCs are very common in the mobile computing market because of their low power-consumption. A typical application is in the area of embedded systems.

SOC integrates a microcontroller (or microprocessor) with advanced peripherals like graphics processing unit (GPU), Wi-Fi module, or coprocessor. If the definition of a microcontroller is a system that integrates a microprocessor with peripheral circuits and memory, the SOC is to a microcontroller what a microcontroller is to processors, remembering that the SOC does not necessarily contain built-in memory.

In general, there are three distinguishable types of SOCs. SOCs built around a microcontroller, SOCs built around a microprocessor (this type can be found in mobile phones), and specialized SOCs designed for specific applications that do not fit into the above two categories. A separate category may be Programmable SOC (PSOC), where some of the internal elements are not predefined and can be programmable in a manner analogous to the FPGA or CPLD.

A SoC consists of both the hardware, described above, and the software controlling the microcontroller, microprocessor or DSP cores, peripherals and interfaces. The design flow for a SoC aims to develop this hardware and software in parallel. Most SoCs are developed from pre-qualified hardware blocks for the hardware elements described above, together with the software drivers that control their operation.

Of particular importance are the protocol stacks that drive industry-standard interfaces like USB. The hardware blocks are put together using CAD tools; the software modules are integrated using a software-development environment.

Once the architecture of the SoC has been defined, any new hardware elements are written in an abstract language termed RTL which defines the circuit behaviour. These elements are connected together in the same RTL language to create the full SoC design.