Processors

Analog Devices DRAMatically Improves TigerSHARC

Analog Devices DRAMatically Improves TigerSHARC Analog Devices announced three new TigerSHARC family members, the TS201, TS202, and TS203, at last month’s Embedded Processor Forum. These new parts represent a major upgrade to the TigerSHARC family in terms of speed, memory capacity, and cost effectiveness. The new TS20x family members operate at up to 600 MHz—twice the clock rate of the older TS101. This doubling in clock speed closes the performance gap between TigerSHARC and one of its Read more...

NeoMagic Unveils Unusual Application Processor

A central theme of last month’s Embedded Processor Forum was the challenge of combining high speed with low power consumption. NeoMagic presented an unusual approach to this problem in its “MiMagic 6” application processor. (For more information on application processors and an overview of the competitive field, see the March 2003 edition of the DSP Insider.) Most application processors contain DSP coprocessors and/or hard-wired accelerators for video and image processing. Texas Instrument’ Read more...

TI Demonstrates 1GHz ‘C64xx

On May 5th, TI announced that it had demonstrated a ’C64xx chip running at 1GHz. TI did not announce any ’C64xx products at this clock speed, but indicated that it expects to be sampling such chips in the first half of next year. (The fastest ’C64xx devices currently available run at 720 MHz.) The new TI chips will target signal-processing intensive applications such as communications infrastructure equipment and high-definition video systems. TI’s demo is intended to give its customers Read more...

BOPS Assets Rumored Acquired by Altera

The one-line statement, “BOPS Inc. has ceased operations,” is all that remains at www.BOPS.com. Although there was no formal announcement of BOPS’s demise, the company’s closure has been common knowledge for some months. In an interesting development, recent reports—as yet unconfirmed—suggest that BOPS’ assets, including its extensive patent portfolio, have been acquired by FPGA giant Altera. Altera has not announced any such acquisition and, when asked, the company declined to comment. Such Read more...

Jeff Bier’s Impulse Response—Stuck in the Past

In his keynote address at last month’s International Signal Processing Conference, Professor Alan Oppenheim showed how traditional signal processing methods can clash with advances in computing hardware. Professor Oppenheim compared two approaches to implementing the discrete Fourier transform. Most DSP engineers assume that the usual approach, the fast Fourier transform (“FFT”), is always the most efficient. However, Professor Oppenheim showed that the FFT is less efficient than other Read more...

ADI Improves Blackfin’s Speed, Cost, and Power

Last month Analog Devices announced three new members of its Blackfin DSP family, the ADSP-BF531, ADSP-BF532, and ADSP-BF533. The fastest of the new chips, the ’BF533, operates at clock speeds of up to 600 MHz—twice the clock speed of earlier Blackfin DSPs. With this increased clock speed, the ’BF533 is faster than most mainstream DSPs, but still slower than today’s fastest DSPs. For example, the BDTI Benchmarks™ show that the 600 MHz ’BF533 is about twice as fast as a 300 MHz TI ’C55xx but Read more...

Reconfigurable Architectures Win Backing for 3G

Reconfigurable processors have long shown great promise for performance-hungry signal processing applications, but these architectures have garnered little mainstream acceptance. This may be changing, though; recent announcements suggest reconfigurable processors may soon become common in 3G base stations. Architecturally, reconfigurable processors share some attributes with digital signal processors (DSPs), field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs), and application-specific integrated Read more...

TI Expands Into Base Station Chipsets

Today, TI introduced two 3G chipsets, one for handsets and one for base stations. Although TI and other vendors have long offered handset chipsets, TI’s base station chipset is the first from a major semiconductor vendor. ASIC-plus-DSP designs dominate the base station market for a number of reasons, including high computational loads, power constraints, and cost pressures. Nonetheless, TI says the superior cost and performance of its chipset will enable it to displace ASIC-based designs. Read more...

LSI’s Energy-Efficient LSI403LP Hits Production

Last August, LSI Logic announced a new member of its LSI40x DSP processor chip family, the LSI403LP. The new chip targets cost- and power-sensitive applications, particularly audio and voice processing. LSI says that at 150 MHz and 1.2 volts the LSI403LP burns just 55 mW of power—an impressively low figure. According to LSI, the chip has now reached production and is available at 150 MHz for about $10 in 10K quantities. The LSI403LP is based on LSI’s ZSP400 DSP core, a superscalar, 16-bit Read more...

TI Boosts Speed, Cuts Costs of ‘C55xx DSPs

Last month Texas Instruments announced two new members of its ’C55xx family, the TMS320VC5501 and the TMS320VC5502. At a projected clock speed of 300 MHz, these new chips will bring the speed of the ’C55xx family—which currently tops out at 200 MHz—more in line with that of its main competitor, Analog Devices’ ADSP-2153x “Blackfin” family. BDTI’s analysis shows that at the projected clock speed of 300 MHz, the new ’C55xx chips will be about 15% slower on typical DSP tasks than the currently Read more...