Processors

Sandbridge Launches Power-Optimized Programmable Handset Processor

Today fabless chip start-up Sandbridge announced its new SB3011 chip, a low-power derivative of the SB3010 chip announced in July 2005.  The chip is fully programmable and is aimed at replacing baseband and application processors in cellular handsets.  Sandbridge will face stiff competition from dominant players such as TI and Qualcomm that have close relationships with handset manufacturers, but the company remains optimistic; the company recently received $15.4 million in Series B funding Read more...

ARC Unveils Player Subsystem and Partnership With SMIC

On September 9th, silicon intellectual property licensor ARC made two related announcements:  It unveiled a new configurable multimedia player subsystem based on its ARC600 family of cores, and announced a new partnership with Chinese silicon foundry Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp. (SMIC).  Under ARC's agreement with SMIC, ARC licensees that design chips in China and use SMIC for fabrication will pay no up-front licensing fees, paying royalties only when their chips start Read more...

Jeff Bier’s Impulse Response—Multi-Core: Sell it Simple

I have two ways of looking at processors. If I’m in geeky-engineer mode, I’m thrilled to learn about the hard-core technical details—like how the branch prediction works, and why the DMA engine is breathtaking in its sophistication and complexity, and how the chip uses a revolutionary new method for implementing… whatever. But if I’m in product-development mode and I have to choose a processor, the last thing I want to hear is how complicated it is. No, I want to hear how straightforward Read more...

What to Look for in DSP Benchmarks

Nearly everyone who works with embedded processors relies on benchmark results in one way or another. Executives use them to help make critical business and technical decisions. Engineers and managers use them to evaluate in-house processors or to help choose a processor for a new product. Marketers use them for competitive analysis and to add credibility to their marketing programs. Good benchmarks, used properly, are an invaluable tool for all of these purposes. Unfortunately, there are Read more...

Ambric Discloses Massively Parallel Architecture

On August 21st fabless semiconductor startup Ambric unveiled its massively parallel processor architecture. Ambric joins a host of start-ups pursuing a similar idea: chaining together a large number of simple RISC-like processor cores in ways intended to avoid inter-processor communication bottlenecks and programming problems found in traditional multiprocessor systems. In the Ambric architecture, individual processors can run at different clock speeds, and processors operate asynchronously 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...

VeriSilicon Buys ZSP Unit from LSI Logic

On July 5th ASIC design house VeriSilicon Holdings Co. announced its acquisition of the ZSP digital signal processor core business from LSI Logic for $13 million in cash and stock (LSI originally acquired the ZSP unit in 1999 for $11.3 million) The acquisition includes cores, development tools, ASSPs, software, and associated patents. VeriSilicon will retain most of the ZSP R&D team and continue developing a roadmap for additional core products. Figure 1. Simplified ZSP600 Read more...

TI Introduces 8-Channel Audio Processor for Multi-Channel Audio

On June 26th Texas Instruments announced the TAS3108, a new 8-channel audio processor targeting high fidelity home and car audio. The TAS3108's predecessor was a fixed-function filter engine. Customers would specify the filter properties and receive a customized fixed-function chip. With the TAS3108, TI has made the chip programmable and allowed customers the ability to implement their own filtering algorithms. The TAS3108 contains a relatively simple fixed-point DSP core running at 135 MHz Read more...

Jeff Bier’s Impulse Response—Multi-Core Math =

When does 1 GHz + 1 GHz  + 1 GHz  + 1 GHz not necessarily equal 4 GHz?  When you’re calculating the performance potential of a multi-core chip.  Freescale recently introduced a new DSP chip, the MSC8144, that contains four 1 GHz SC3400 processor cores. Freescale characterizes the new chip as being “performance-equivalent” to one 4 GHz core. But is it really?  As usual, the answer is, “It depends.”  It depends on what kind of application you’re running, how you map the application onto the Read more...

OMAP3 to Ship with Hand Crafted Cortex-A8 ARM Core

In May, Texas Instruments disclosed its first implementation of the ARM Cortex-A8 processor.  Started in 2003 and reportedly involving a team of forty-five engineers in TI’s wireless handset chip unit, the implementation represents a massive effort considering the Cortex-A8 is just one element of the complex SoCs designed by TI for cell phones.  Typically, ARM cores are implemented using logic synthesis exclusively.  For the Cortex-A8, TI instead took the very labor-intensive path of hand Read more...