InsideDSP — In-depth analysis and opinion

Jeff Bier’s Impulse Response—Your Mileage May Vary

With gasoline prices wildly fluctuating in the United States, car buyers are paying increased attention to fuel efficiency. And fuel efficiency seems easy to determine: new cars come plastered with enormous stickers proclaiming their EPA-rated fuel efficiency. However, environmentalists are quick to point out that these EPA ratings are only loosely related to real-world fuel efficiency. The EPA admits as much, adding small print that reads “your mileage may vary.” Fuel efficiency is tough Read more...

Embedded C Extensions Move Forward

Last month the ISO approved the final technical ballot for Embedded C, an extension to the C programming language that will ease signal-processing software development. After an additional round of editing, the ISO is expected to publish the Embedded C specification as a “technical report.” An ISO technical report is similar to a standard, but carries somewhat less authority. Embedded C extends the C programming language with support for fractional arithmetic, multiple address spaces, and I Read more...

Telairity Introduces Vector DSP Core

Licensing upstart Telairity introduced its high-performance DSP core, the TVP400, at last month’s HotChips conference. On the surface, the TVP400 resembles competing high-performance DSP cores. For example, the TVP400 is projected to achieve a worst-case clock speed of 420 MHz in a 0.13-micron process, which is comparable to the 300–400 MHz clock speeds achieved by competing DSP cores. The TVP400 also delivers a level of parallelism similar to that of its competitors. For example, the TVP400 Read more...

Jeff Bier’s Impulse Response—Watch Your Back

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Think you know who your competitors are? You’d better watch your back, because changes in end products are forcing processor vendors and equipment manufacturers to face unfamiliar new foes. Convergence is the key trend causing new rivalries to arise. One of the most obvious examples of convergence is the cell phone. Cell phones are acquiring the functionality of PDAs, digital still cameras, and digital audio players. (Next year they’ll probably incorporate can openers and vacuum cleaners.) Read more...

ARM Acquires Adelante’s A|RT Technology

On July 22nd, ARM Ltd. and Adelante Technologies announced that ARM has acquired Adelante’s Belgium-based A|RT coprocessor technology division. (The acquisition does not affect Adelante’s licensable DSP core division in the Netherlands.) The A|RT technology allows users to develop application-specific coprocessors to accelerate computationally intensive portions of applications. The resulting processor (or “data engine,” as ARM now refers to it) can be used alone or in combination with (for Read more...

Digital Media Processor Competition Heats Up

In the most recent announcement, Texas Instruments unveiled two new members of its ’C64x-based TMS320DM64x family. These two new processors, the ’DM640 and the ’DM641, are easily the least expensive ’C64x-based processors announced to date. The 600 MHz and 500 MHz versions of the ’DM641 will be priced at $37 and $32, respectively, and the 400 MHz ’DM640 will be priced at $20. (All prices quoted in this article are for 10,000-unit quantities.) The new ’DM64x chips will compete directly with Read more...

Jeff Bier’s Impulse Response—The Second Wave

The late 1990s saw a wave of start-ups and big-company spin-offs offering novel processor architectures for DSP applications. While many of these companies fielded competent architectures, most never had a chance of success. Even when the industry was enjoying boom times, there just weren’t enough customers starting new chip and system designs to sustain a dozen new processor architectures alongside the many entrenched competitors. Unfortunately for the upstart vendors, their prospective Read more...

Analog Devices DRAMatically Improves TigerSHARC

Analog Devices DRAMatically Improves TigerSHARC Analog Devices announced three new TigerSHARC family members, the TS201, TS202, and TS203, at last month’s Embedded Processor Forum. These new parts represent a major upgrade to the TigerSHARC family in terms of speed, memory capacity, and cost effectiveness. The new TS20x family members operate at up to 600 MHz—twice the clock rate of the older TS101. This doubling in clock speed closes the performance gap between TigerSHARC and one of its Read more...

NeoMagic Unveils Unusual Application Processor

A central theme of last month’s Embedded Processor Forum was the challenge of combining high speed with low power consumption. NeoMagic presented an unusual approach to this problem in its “MiMagic 6” application processor. (For more information on application processors and an overview of the competitive field, see the March 2003 edition of the DSP Insider.) Most application processors contain DSP coprocessors and/or hard-wired accelerators for video and image processing. Texas Instrument’ Read more...

Jeff Bier’s Impulse Response—The Consumer Audio Renaissance

Consumer audio products have always held a special fascination for me. Indeed, it was my childhood interest in audio gear that largely motivated my pursuit of an engineering career. But during most of my career, mainstream consumer audio technology has been pretty staid territory, with little in the way of exciting technology and few compelling new products. More recently, though, I’ve been delighted to see what I believe is the beginning of a revolution in consumer audio equipment. The Read more...