Processors

SequenceL Programming Language, Toolset Strive to Leverage Multi-Core Processor Potential

For decades, multiprocessor systems were rare and most developers never had to think about how to program them. This began to change roughly a decade ago. In the spring of 2005, both AMD (Athlon 64 X2) and Intel ("Smithfield") unveiled x86 CPUs with dual processor cores on a single die. More recently, not only has the number of both physical and virtual on-chip cores steadily grown, the multi-core trend has also expanded into mobile and embedded applications. As multiprocessor chips become more Read more...

Case Study: Cool Algorithm, But Will It Fit in My Product?

Algorithms are the essence of digital signal processing; they are the mathematical "recipes" that transform signals in useful ways. Companies developing new algorithms, or considering purchasing or licensing algorithms, often need to assess whether an algorithm will fit within their processing budget—and thereby within their cost and power consumption targets. But estimating an algorithm's processing load can be difficult if the algorithm has not already been carefully mapped onto the target Read more...

HP, PayPal Give ARM-plus-DSP Chip a (Moon)Shot

The December 2012 edition of InsideDSP included the article "Texas Instruments' Latest KeyStone II SoCs: Is A Special-Purpose Server Strategy Feasible?," which discussed TI's 66AK2Hx SoCs for specialized server applications. Based on the company's KeyStone II architecture, 66AK2Hx chips include the same ARM Cortex-A15 cores (one, two or four per chip) plus C66x DSP cores (zero, one, four or eight) as other KeyStone II family devices such as the cellular base station-tailored C6636 introduced Read more...

New Chips Expand Automotive Safety Capabilities

Smartphones and tablets may hog the limelight, but advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) represent another hot technology sector. Market analysis firm Strategy Analytics, for example, expects that by 2021, automotive OEMs will be spending in excess of $25 billion per year on a diversity of assistance and safety solutions (Figure 1). Embedded vision is a critical element of ADAS designs, some of which use vision alone, while others combine vision with radar, LiDAR, infrared, ultrasound, or Read more...

Jeff Bier’s Impulse Response—"We're Number One!"

My colleagues and I at BDTI recently completed a project to help a chip company select a licensable processor core to perform computer vision functions in a new SoC design. In the process, we learned many things about these processors. But, more interesting to me, we also learned something about human nature. A typical general-purpose embedded processor chip is used by hundreds or thousands of customers, so suppliers find it necessary to make detailed information about these chips readily Read more...

ON Semiconductor's Hearing Aid SoCs: Distributed Performance That's Easy on Batteries

The hearing aid is a challenging digital signal processing application. The amount of processing horsepower required is formidable, both to filter out ambient noise and to amplify and otherwise enhance sounds that are of importance, and especially considering that the signal processing chain must be traversed within a few milliseconds in order that the user doesn't perceive lip sync loss or other visual-to-audible delays. But long battery life is equally essential; no hearing aid owner wants to Read more...

Case Study: BDTI's Expert, Independent Analysis Enables Optimum Vision Processor Selection

A growing number of products are incorporating computer vision capabilities. This, in turn, has led to rapid growth in the number of processors being offered for vision applications.  Selecting the best processor (whether a chip for use in a system design, or an IP core for use in an SoC) is challenging, for several reasons. First, these processors use very diverse architecture approaches, which makes it tough to compare them. Second, because vision applications and algorithms are also quite Read more...

ARM Cortex-M7: Digital Signal Processing Drives Family Evolution

ARM's Cortex-A series of high-performance CPU cores garner significant attention by virtue of their use in high-volume, high-visibility smartphones, tablets, and other consumer electronics devices. But company's Cortex-M and Cortex-R processor families, which target embedded applications, are even more widely used. The latest Cortex-M family member, the just-announced Cortex-M7, further boosts performance especially in floating-point and other digital signal processing applications, blurring Read more...

The Movidius Myriad 2: An Embedded Vision Processor Through and Through

Substantial industry investment in a particular application, both in terms of silicon devices and the software running on and interacting with them, is often a barometer of that application's transition toward mainstream adoption. This has definitely been the case recently for the practical implementation of computer vision technology, which for decades was limited to academic research and niche commercial uses. Now, however, the steadily improving performance, power consumption and cost- Read more...

Sensory: Voice and Face Recognition Blended Intelligently

Sensory has built its business and made its name over the past 20 years in voice detection and speech recognition, as InsideDSP's April 2013 coverage of the company's TrulyHandsFree always-on voice activation algorithm showcased. However, as Gordon Haupt, the company's director of vision technology, noted during a recent briefing, the name "Sensory" isn't speech-specific, indicative of the company’s long-term aspiration to expand beyond microphones into algorithms fed by other types of input Read more...