Case Studies

Case Study: Reducing Product-Development Risk

To stay competitive, technology companies must consistently develop strong new products. This is particularly true for companies offering processors, tools, or systems that incorporate signal processing technology. Unfortunately, developing a major new product is risky. New products require many design decisions, and it is easy to make poor choices. Common design mistakes include: Overlooking promising design options or valuable resources such as off-the-shelf components Read more...

Case Study: Managing Offshore Software Development

Increasingly, processor vendors need to deliver extensive software libraries optimized for their processors. In the realm of signal processing applications, this software may include large libraries of building-block functions (filters, transforms, etc.), application modules (such as audio or video compression algorithms), and complete end-product reference designs. To meet these software needs, many processor vendors are attracted to offshore software development firms due to their low Read more...

Case Study—Optimizing Presentations, Products, and Plans

The best way to ensure that a presentation is effective is to test it with a knowledgeable, critical, and responsive audience. A test audience can also help ensure that the content is correct, relevant, and appropriate for the intended audience. Just as important, a test audience can help presenters gauge the clarity, appeal, and impact of their pitch. After all, superb technical content serves no purpose if the audience loses interest a few minutes into the presentation. BDTI analysts can Read more...

Case Study—Measuring Processor Energy Consumption

Energy consumption is a chief concern for many digital signal processing applications, especially for portable applications where battery life is paramount. In these applications, an accurate understanding of energy consumption is critical to processor selection and to system design. Unfortunately, many obstacles hinder comparisons of processors’ energy consumption. One key problem is that vendors usually report power consumption, not energy consumption. Calculating energy consumption— Read more...

Case Study: Creating Top-Notch Tools for Signal Processing

Signal processing is becoming important in an increasingly broad range of embedded systems. As signal processing workloads become more widespread, these workloads are increasingly assigned to embedded processors that were not designed with signal processing in mind. Because these processors were not designed for signal processing tasks, the processors’ software development tools often lack critical features needed for signal processing software development. The tool features needed for signal Read more...

Case Study: Video Benchmarking

Digital video has emerged as one of the hottest markets for DSPs and other types of processors. As a result, many processors now target digital video applications. However, not every processor is up to the challenge. Digital video applications have heavy computation and memory-bandwidth loads, so it’s critical to choose a processor that can handle those demands. For this reason, system and SoC designers who are evaluating processors for digital video applications are strongly motivated to Read more...

Case Study: Multi-Tiered Software Optimization

While nearly all signal processing applications require some degree of software optimization, some applications require a sophisticated, multi-tiered optimization approach in order to meet their performance goals. To obtain the most efficient code, DSP software must be optimized at four distinct levels. First, the software architecture and data flow must be designed to take maximum advantage of the processor’s resources. Second, the appropriate data types must be selected—too big and you’re Read more...

Case Study: Executive Decision Support

Technology company executives must be able to make sound business and technology decisions. To do so, they need a realistic picture of their company's strengths and weaknesses, and an accurate, comprehensive understanding of the existing and emerging competitive landscape. In short, they need an objective perspective. It can be challenging for executives to gain this perspective, though, since much of their information comes from employees within their companies. Even the most fair-minded and Read more...

Case Study–Benchmarks for Tools, Software Libraries, and More

System developers often rely on processor benchmarks to gauge system performance. However, the processor is just one of many components that determines overall performance. Fully understanding system performance requires careful analysis of many other elements, such as code-generation tools and third-party software libraries. Unfortunately, a host of factors can confound attempts to analyze these components. For example, it is difficult to prevent variations in programmer skill and style from Read more...

Case Study: Optimizing Presentations, Products, and Plans

The best way to ensure that a presentation is effective is to test it with a knowledgeable, critical, and responsive audience. A test audience can also help ensure that the content is correct, relevant, and appropriate for the intended audience. Just as important, a test audience can help presenters gauge the clarity, appeal, and impact of their pitch. After all, superb technical content serves no purpose if the audience loses interest a few minutes into the presentation. BDTI analysts can Read more...