Benchmarks

CEVA's Computer Vision Advances to the Next Generation

With the MM3101, launched at the January 2012 Consumer Electronics Show, silicon IP supplier CEVA for the first time provided a processor core with instructions and other features specifically tailored for computer vision algorithms.  (The precursor MM2000 and MM3000 were focused predominantly on encoding and decoding images and video). Later, the company released a super-resolution algorithm for computational photography, along with a software framework that enables Android applications to Read more...

Jeff Bier’s Impulse Response—Garbage In, Garbage Out

The phrase "garbage in, garbage out" is usually associated with writing and using computer programs. In fact, the concept originated with Charles Babbage, inventor of the first computer. Amusingly, Babbage wrote: On two occasions I have been asked, 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?'...I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question. The concept of "garbage in, garbage out" applies Read more...

HP, PayPal Give ARM-plus-DSP Chip a (Moon)Shot

The December 2012 edition of InsideDSP included the article "Texas Instruments' Latest KeyStone II SoCs: Is A Special-Purpose Server Strategy Feasible?," which discussed TI's 66AK2Hx SoCs for specialized server applications. Based on the company's KeyStone II architecture, 66AK2Hx chips include the same ARM Cortex-A15 cores (one, two or four per chip) plus C66x DSP cores (zero, one, four or eight) as other KeyStone II family devices such as the cellular base station-tailored C6636 introduced Read more...

Case Study: BDTI-Developed, QDSP6-Optimized Audio Algorithms Deliver the Sweet Sounds of Success

Qualcomm recently opened up the QDSP6 (aka "Hexagon") DSP core in its Snapdragon SoCs to programming access by its customers and software developer partners. Multimedia applications, for example, can benefit from leveraging QDSP6 processing resources, boosting overall performance, minimizing overall power consumption, and freeing up the CPU to tackle other tasks. And mobile application processors such as Snapdragon are increasingly finding use in a diversity of embedded applications beyond the Read more...

Case Study: BDTI's Expert, Independent Analysis Enables Optimum Vision Processor Selection

A growing number of products are incorporating computer vision capabilities. This, in turn, has led to rapid growth in the number of processors being offered for vision applications.  Selecting the best processor (whether a chip for use in a system design, or an IP core for use in an SoC) is challenging, for several reasons. First, these processors use very diverse architecture approaches, which makes it tough to compare them. Second, because vision applications and algorithms are also quite Read more...

ARM Cortex-M7: Digital Signal Processing Drives Family Evolution

ARM's Cortex-A series of high-performance CPU cores garner significant attention by virtue of their use in high-volume, high-visibility smartphones, tablets, and other consumer electronics devices. But company's Cortex-M and Cortex-R processor families, which target embedded applications, are even more widely used. The latest Cortex-M family member, the just-announced Cortex-M7, further boosts performance especially in floating-point and other digital signal processing applications, blurring Read more...

Case Study: Choosing the Right Benchmarks for the Job

As embedded processors and applications become increasingly complex, good benchmarks are more important than ever. System designers need good benchmarks to judge whether a processor will meet the needs of their applications, and to make accurate comparisons among processors. Processor developers need good benchmarks to assess how their processors stack up against the competition, and to prove their processors' capabilities to customers. But what exactly comprises a good benchmark? One obvious Read more...

Lithography, Architecture Evolutions Boost Analog Devices' Mid-Range Blackfin Devices

The April 2012 edition of InsideDSP covered Analog Devices' BF60x family, which as the then-published product roadmap indicated, was the successor to the high end of the BF5xx product range (Figure 1). Figure 1. Analog Devices' new BF70x products fill the "single core Blackfin" next-generation slot on the company's published roadmap two years ago. All four BF60x family members run at clock speeds of up to 500 MHz and integrate a dual Blackfin DSP cores; the BF608 and BF609 additionally embed a Read more...

ARM's 2015 Mid-Range Platform Prep: A 32-Bit Next-Step

It will likely be news to none of you that the smartphone and tablet market has been on a steep ramp in recent years, and is expected to continue its aggressive growth for the foreseeable future (Figure 1): Figure 1. ARM forecasts continued vigorous growth for smartphones and tablets over the next few years, and requires a mid-range successor to the venerable Cortex-A9 to both continue to address customers' requirements and to fend off competitive challenges from Intel's Atom and other Read more...

Altera's Next-Generation FPGAs: Advanced Process Lithographies Lead to Performance, Power Consumption Efficiencies

Intel is widely regarded as being not only the world's largest semiconductor supplier, but also a leading-edge manufacturing process developer and implementer. While foundries such as TSMC are still finalizing their 20 nm processes, for example, Intel has been shipping 22 nm-based production ICs ("Ivy Bridge" CPUs) since May of last year; the company had previously showcased its first 22 nm test wafer at the September 2009 Intel Developer Forum. Intel similarly achieved a several-year Read more...