Processors

TI Targets Small Cells with New Multi-Core SoCs

Texas Instruments (TI) is continuing to expand its cellular base-station SoC family, incorporating multiple instances of the TMS320C66x (C66x) DSP core that the company introduced in early 2010. The new TMS320TC16612 (TCI6612) and TMS320TC16614 (TCI6614) chips target femtocell (approximately 64 users) and picocell (approximately 128 users) base station designs. For the first time, TI has also integrated a CPU core―an ARM Cortex-A8―to handle control and management functions. The new chips will Read more...

Embedded Vision Alliance Forms to Catalyze Practical Applications of Computer Vision

A new industry association, the Embedded Vision Alliance, is being formed to help embedded system designers harness computer vision in their products.  BDTI, which has initiated the partnership, believes that computer vision—extracting meaning from images and video—is poised to proliferate into a wide range of applications in the next few years. The success of the Microsoft Kinect—which has become the fastest-selling consumer electronics device in history, selling 10 million units in its first Read more...

MathWorks Extends Code-Generation Capabilities Across its Tool Portfolio

The MathWorks—maker of MATLAB modeling environment—has launched a trio of new code-generation tools called MATLAB Coder, Simulink Coder, and Embedded Coder. With these automatic code-generation products, The MathWorks aims to eliminate the need for development teams to maintain parallel development efforts—modeling algorithms in MATLAB, for instance, while separately coding in C or C++ for embedded implementation. MATLAB users will get direct code-generation capability for the first time Read more...

TI Expands Video-Centric DaVinci Processor Family

Combining a CPU core, DSP core, and numerous video accelerators, new additions to the Texas Instruments (TI) DaVinci video-centric processor line target applications ranging from personal media players to multi-channel digital video recorders and professional broadcasting systems. The new chips comprise two families: The TMS320CDM814x (DM814x) family is optimized for low power consumption; these chips support a single video channel at 1080p resolution and 60 frames per second (fps), or three Read more...

Oxford Digital Offers Small Audio DSP Core With Graphical Programming

Even if you are a DSP industry insider, you may not have heard of UK-based Oxford Digital. Since its founding in 2006, the company has established itself primarily as a provider of design consulting services for audio applications. Through its consulting work, Oxford Digital has created a small configurable DSP core called TinyCore and an associated graphical programming environment.  With these assets in hand, Oxford Digital now aims to make its mark licensing silicon intellectual property Read more...

CEVA Hits 1 GHz With Latest TeakLite DSP Core

CEVA has added the CEVA-TL3211 core to its TeakLite family of licensable DSP cores targeting applications ranging from handset baseband processing to audio processing in home-network, multimedia gateway, and living-room multimedia products. According to CEVA, the new core will reach a clock speed of 1 GHz in a 40 nm implementation and includes a new fully-cached memory design. The new core bumps up the performance of the broadly licensed TeakLite family while offering binary compatibility Read more...

Freescale’s New i.MX Application Processors Scale to Quad-Core

Freescale has launched a new family of application processors—the i.MX 6—that includes single-, dual-, and quad-core members along with a complement of hardware accelerators for multimedia applications. The processors combine ARM’s Cortex-A9 CPU with a 3-d graphics controller, video processing unit (VPU), image capture function, and image processing unit (IPU). The family targets a broad range of products from monochrome e-book readers and simple tablets at the low end to netbooks and full- Read more...

Case Study: Chip Design Costs Make Processor Core Choice Paramount

As we’ve all heard, the cost of creating a custom chip has skyrocketed. Still, there are applications where a custom chip is justified—usually by specialized, demanding technical requirements. Today, custom chips often incorporate multiple processor cores.  The choice of a licensable processor core is among the first decisions that a design team makes, and may be the decision that they live with the longest:  the hassles of porting software from one processor architecture to another mean that Read more...

Jeff Bier’s Impulse Response—The Rise of Licensable Cores

Ten years ago, I wrote about how licensable processor cores were beginning to play a more important role in the industry.  Among other trends, I observed that large chip companies were beginning to adopt licensable cores for application-specific chips such as cellphone baseband SoCs, rather than using proprietary cores that they developed in-house.  This trend has certainly strengthened over the past ten years. It’s one thing for a company making application-specific SoCs—which often Read more...

Freescale Launches 4G Baseband SoC

The march toward 4G cellular networks is accelerating. For example, Verizon just lit up its LTE network in 38 U.S. cities. But widespread deployment will require lower-cost base stations.  Freescale is aiming to enable lower-cost base stations with its new baseband SoCs, introduced last month on the heels of Texas Instrument’s latest 4G offering. The new Freescale SoCs are based on Freescale’s SC3850 StarCore DSP core that, at 1.2 GHz has just achieved the top fixed-point score on the BDTI Read more...