Processors

Case Study—Improving Chip Architectures with Specialized Talent

In an ideal world, chip designers would evaluate their new designs on real applications. But who’s got the time to implement an entire cellular baseband or video codec just to see if their proposed design is efficient? That’s the reason chip designers use benchmarks. But benchmarking is not just about selecting the right algorithms. It’s also about careful implementation—careful crafting of software that is appropriately optimized for the target architecture. As a result, sound benchmarking Read more...

Jeff Bier’s Impulse Response—System-in-Package Will Bring Variety, Efficiency

Last month I wrote about how my colleagues and I believe that embedded processor vendors will need to become more involved in developing or acquiring proprietary algorithms to stay competitive in the coming decade.  This month, I’ll discuss another long-term trend that we expect to see in processor-based chips: the dramatically expanded use of multi-die packaging (also called “system-in-package”). We all know that integration of more functionality at the silicon die level has some powerful Read more...

BDTI Releases Benchmark Results for Tilera’s TILE64 Multicore Processor

BDTI has released independent benchmark results for Tilera’s massively parallel TILE64 processor on the BDTI Communications Benchmark (OFDM)™. The TILE64 chip incorporates 64 processor cores connected to each other in a mesh configuration. The cores operate at 866 MHz and are fairly simple, three-issue VLIW machines that support limited SIMD operations, such as SIMD adds and subtracts (but not SIMD multiplies).  Tilera expects engineers to program the chip using C/C++ along with intrinsics to Read more...

Jeff Bier’s Impulse Response—Proprietary Algorithms Key for Embedded Processor Vendors

Earlier this year my colleagues and I did some crystal ball analysis and identified a number of key trends that we expect to shape the embedded processor market over the next decade. One of these is that we expect embedded processor companies to be increasingly differentiated by their ownership of proprietary algorithms. This may seem out of left field; what do processor companies have to do with proprietary algorithms?  Here’s our reasoning.  Processor prices are dropping, while processor Read more...

Case Study: Maximize Press Coverage of Your Product

Unless you’re announcing a laptop that runs off body heat or similar epochal breakthrough, it’s hard for technology companies to get media attention.  And when a product does get editorial coverage, it’s even harder to distinguish what’s true from the infomercials.  With every announcement claiming “better,” “new,” and “breakthrough,” what will grab legitimate attention?  One ingredient of a successful announcement, PR professionals agree, is compelling data. In 2007, an early-stage chip Read more...

Case Study: “Your Mileage May Vary:” Creating Reliable Comparisons of IP Cores

An attractive attribute of licensable processor cores is the flexibility chip designers have to adapt these cores to their chosen fabrication process, cell library, tool flow, logic synthesis goals and other conditions.  In other words, chip designers can tune the core to the needs of a particular application and to their preferred chip design methodology.  An unfortunate side effect of this flexibility is that it can be extremely difficult to make apples-to-apples comparisons between Read more...

Texas Instruments Focuses on Low Power with New Chips

In July, Texas Instruments announced that it will offer new low-power variants of four of its key DSP processor product lines: the ’C55x, the ’C64x+, the ’C67x, and OMAP. The new family members are intended to span a wide range of low-power applications, from those that are line-powered but require low heat dissipation (such as home entertainment gear, where cooling fans are considered too noisy)  to those that require a week or more of battery life (such as portable medical monitoring devices Read more...

Freescale Introduces Basestation Baseband Accelerator

Last month Freescale introduced a new baseband accelerator chip for wireless infrastructure equipment.  The chip is tailored to the high data rates and computational demands of emerging wireless standards, including 3G-LTE, TDD-LTE, HSPA+, and WiMAX. The accelerator, called the MSBA8100, is designed to run alongside Freescale’s MSC8144, which is a high-performance quad-core DSP processor chip.  Together, the two chips are intended to provide a full baseband solution and potentially eliminate Read more...

Jeff Bier’s Impulse Response—Application Processor—Say What?

Recently I wrote about how the term “DSP” seems to be losing its cachet, and people are starting to use terms that are more application-specific. Instead of “DSP processors,” there are now “digital signal controllers,”  “multimedia processors,” and “video processors,” for example. These terms are fine with me.  But there’s one that really annoys me: “application processor.” “Application processor” is the term used for the processors in cell phones that do stuff other than the actual cell Read more...

HP Licenses Imaging IP for Camera Phones

Late last year Hewlett Packard announced that it was exiting the digital camera market, citing a lack of growth in that business sector.  But just because HP has quit the camera business doesn’t mean it’s abandoning all of its digital camera technologies; the image processing algorithms originally developed for HP’s digital cameras will now be incorporated into cell phones, enabling users to create high-quality prints from pictures taken with camera phones. HP has provided a license of its Read more...