Processors

Jeff Bier’s Impulse Response—“DSP” becomes ubiquitous, passé

When my partners and I founded BDTI back in the early 90’s, “DSP” was in the process of becoming both a hot technology and a widely used abbreviation. The abbreviation meant two distinct things: digital signal processing, and digital signal processor.  You could usually figure out which one was meant by the context, but in some ways they were interchangeable—if you were doing digital signal processing, you were probably doing it on a digital signal processor. Today, DSP (in both senses) is Read more...

3DLabs Aims Massively Parallel Chips at Portable Multimedia

When people talk about massively parallel, multicore chips, they’re usually talking about chips for high-performance line-powered applications, like WiMAX base stations or desktop video processing.  But 3DLabs is headed in a different direction.  The fabless chip company offers a massively parallel media processor, the DMS-02, which the company says is a perfect fit for portable multimedia devices with demanding video and audio processing requirements—such as high-end cellular handsets and Read more...

IBM’s Cell for Embedded?

IBM’s multicore Cell processor has garnered a lot of media attention over the last couple of years, as the multicore approach itself has become something of a juggernaut. BDTI recently investigated the current state of Cell products, and whether the architecture is likely to get significant traction in embedded applications. The Cell processor incorporates eight “synergistic processing elements” (“SPEs”), each of which is a complex,  superscalar processor with SIMD features for accelerating Read more...

Case Study: Where Does Your Processing Engine Fit In?

Developing a new signal processing engine is expensive and risky, particularly for a small start-up or for an established company moving into an unfamiliar market.  There are good reasons to take that risk: signal processing has become ubiquitous in a wide range of application areas, and offers the potential for high revenues. The flip side is that the market is already densely populated with all kinds of signal processing engines: single-core chips, multi-core chips, massively parallel Read more...

Case Study: Shoehorning Maximum Signal Processing into Minimal Processors

Digital signal processing (DSP) algorithms are increasingly important in embedded systems. For example, compute-intensive multimedia functions are finding their way into applications ranging from toys to appliances to telephones. But in many of these systems, cost constraints dictate a processor with very minimal horsepower and limited—or no—signal-processing-specific features.    A classic example of this kind of processor is the ARM7. This architecture was introduced in 1993, has no DSP Read more...

TI Offers OMAP3 Application Processors to the Mass Market

Texas Instruments yesterday introduced four new members of its OMAP3 family of high-end application processors, and announced that these chips will be offered broadly as part of TI’s “catalog” product line. Earlier members of the OMAP3 family were available only to selected customers of TI’s Wireless Terminal Business Unit (WTBU), typically big-name cell phone manufacturers with very high volumes. The new catalog parts are the OMAP3503, OMAP3515, OMAP3525, and OMAP3530. Like the original Read more...

Ambric’s Video Accelerator Card Tackles HD H.264

At Macworld last month, Ambric announced that it is using its massively parallel processor architecture as the basis for PC plug-in video accelerator boards. The new video platform is based on Ambric’s AM2045 programmable processor chip and includes off-the-shelf video codec software written by video codec house MainConcept (which was acquired by DivX late last year). OEMs can buy a PCI Express-based reference board from Ambric and add their own codecs or pre-/post-processing software, then Read more...

VeriSilicon’s New Silicon IP Solution for HD Audio

VeriSilicon has released a licenseable DSP core, the ZSP800, and an associated development platform, VZ.AudioHD, optimized for “HD” audio applications. The term “high definition audio” can mean different things to different people.  For example,  in 2004 Intel introduced “high definition audio” technology aimed at PCs. For Verisilicon, “HD audio” refers to the audio requirements assocaited with digital high-definition TV (HDTV), high-definition optical media (Blu-ray and HD DVD), and games Read more...

Behind the scenes: Dolby’s acquisition of Coding Technologies

Dolby, based in San Francisco, CA, has acquired audio compression specialist Coding Technologies. Dolby is well-known for its AC-3 audio compression algorithm (also known as Dolby Digital), used worldwide in cinema sound and more recently accepted for audio for digital television in North America.  Coding Technologies focuses on audio compression for mobile, digital broadcasting and Internet markets worldwide.  Coding Technologies has developed Spectral Band Replication and other technologies Read more...

Microchip Switches to MIPS Core for PIC32

Last month, Microchip announced a new 32-bit microcontroller chip family, the PIC32. With this family, Microchip—a long-time player in 8- and 16-bit microcontrollers—is going after the 32-bit microcontroller market, and making a big change in architecture.   Unlike Microchip’s earlier chips, which were based on the company’s proprietary processor architecture, the new family is based on the MIPS M4K core.  PIC32 chips, which are currently sampling, will operate at up to 72 MHz, with pricing Read more...