Processors

Inside DSP on Low Power: Designing Low-Power Signal Processing Systems

Many embedded signal-processing systems require good energy efficiency. Some devices, such as medical implants and wireless sensors, must operate for years on just one battery charge. To do so, these devices must consume only microwatts of power—a significant design challenge to say the least! Larger devices such as cellular phones and multimedia-oriented PDAs can afford larger batteries and higher energy consumption, but they also must support heavy processing loads. Today's cellular phone Read more...

Inside DSP on Low Power: Processor Power Consumption—Beyond the Data Sheet

Processor power consumption is a hot topic today (no pun intended). Consumers' appetites for sophisticated portable electronic devices are strong. But consumers want it all: they want feature-packed devices in small, slim hand-held form factors with good battery life. To meet these expectations, system designers must give high priority to minimizing power consumption. Although portable electronic devices incorporate many subsystems that consume power, such as LCD displays and mass storage Read more...

Inside DSP on Low Power: Processors for Low-Power Signal Processing

In many low-power applications, the processor is a major contributor to the overall system energy consumption. Hence, the processor typically plays a key role in determining a product's battery life. The choice of processor also affects many other critical aspects of the system, such as price and performance. In this article we explore processor options for low-power signal processing applications. We begin with a discussion of the criteria to consider when selecting a processor for a low-power Read more...

Inside DSP on Low Power: Long Live the Battery

Low-power Signal Processing Trends A decade ago, low-power digital signal processing applications were rare, largely due to the lack of energy-efficient processors. Today, advances in chip fabrication techniques and processor architectures have dramatically improved energy efficiency for a broad range of processors. In addition, energy efficiency has become a top consideration for designers of some classes of processors—in some cases eclipsing factors such as speed. These advances are opening Read more...

Inside DSP on Low Power: How Low Can You Go?

When my old PDA croaked recently, I wasn't too upset. I'd had it for years and was looking forward to upgrading. I bought a new HP iPaq and was immediately impressed with its speed and features—especially the bright color display. But while the performance and capabilities of this little machine are a huge step forward from the previous-generation technology, battery life has taken a big step backward. Whereas my old Palm V would run for two weeks between charges, the new unit needs to be Read more...

Stretch Announces Software-Configurable Processor Architecture

Last month Stretch Inc. announced the availability of an unusual new processor chip family, the S5000. This family pairs a 300 MHz Tensilica Xtensa RISC processor core with a 100 MHz reconfigurable compute fabric. The reconfigurable fabric, referred to as the Instruction Set Extension Fabric (ISEF), allows a set of custom instructions to be added to the RISC processor's instruction set at run-time via software. The ISEF is logically separated into two sections, an organization that allows one Read more...

Freescale and TI Introduce Low-Cost, High-Speed DSPs

Freescale Semiconductor, Motorola’s soon-to-be spun-out semiconductor division, recently announced the MSC711x family of processors targeting telecom and VoIP applications. The MSC711x family is a lower-cost, binary-compatible derivative of Freescale’s high-end MSC81xx family, which targets performance-hungry communications infrastructure applications. Previous StarCore-based chips from Freescale were too expensive for many cost-sensitive applications. The lower cost of the MSC711x family Read more...

Intel Doubles PXA2xx’s Signal Processing Speed

Today Intel announced the PXA270, PXA271, PXA272, and PXA273—the latest members of its PXA2xx family of application processors. These new PXA27x family members are the first processors to include the “Wireless MMX” extensions to Intel’s ARM-compatible XScale architecture. The Wireless MMX extensions enable the PXA27x to perform 64-bit-wide single-instruction multiple-data (SIMD) operations. For example, the PXA27x can perform four 16-bit multiply-accumulate operations per cycle. In comparison Read more...

Inside DSP on Video: Smart Processor Picks for Digital Video

Adam Lins contributed to this article. Processor vendors offer a dizzying array of options for digital video applications. Selecting the right processor from the myriad options—and understanding the tradeoffs associated with each choice—is key to getting digital video products to market at the right time and at the right price. In this article we introduce basic concepts needed to select a processor for a digital video application. We begin with a discussion of the processing needs of a Read more...

Inside DSP on Video: The Revolution Will Be Televised

A revolution in video technology is under way. The move from analog to digital is reshaping video applications and creating entirely new classes of products and services. The changes affect a broad range of video applications, from portable media players to newscasting to military equipment. In this article, we focus on the video technology trends in consumer electronics markets, particularly developments in home entertainment gear. These markets represent by far the largest Read more...