One way to address the problem of densely-packed, overheating chip designs is with response area microprocessors. When the heat produced by high-density semiconductor devices is contained in a limited area, thermal stress develops. This is referred to as chip-level heating. As a result, a microprocessor with a response region is used. This response area microprocessor will lower the chip's operating temperature by improving the efficiency of heat removal from the chip's surface. A response area microprocessor (RAM) is a microprocessor architecture that is optimized for applications where high performance and low power are critical. The goal of the design is to reduce power consumption and to increase performance at the same time, by making use of more efficient algorithms and data structures, and by eliminating the need for a lot of the hardware that is present in traditional microprocessors. The RAM architecture has been shown to be very effective in applications such as digital signal processing, cryptography, and multimedia applications, where high performance and low power are both critical.