Video

QDSP6 V4: BDTI Benchmark Results and Implementation Details Of Qualcomm's DSP Core

The article, "QDSP6 V4: Qualcomm Gives Customers and Developers Programming Access to its DSP Core," which appeared in the June 2012 edition of InsideDSP, showcased Qualcomm’s decision to open up access to its DSP core via a software development kit. This decision corresponded with the release of the fourth version (V4) of the sixth generation (QDSP6, aka "Hexagon") of the company's proprietary DSP architecture, found in the company's 28 nm-based Snapdragon S4 SoCs. To be clear, this broadened Read more...

Jeff Bier’s Impulse Response—Will Smartphones and Tablets Subsume All Consumer Electronics?

In my October column, I explored the phenomenon of mobile application processors (the brains of smartphones and tablets) competing against more traditional types of embedded processors for use in embedded systems. But after writing that column, something happened that made me realize that mobile application processors don't necessarily have to be designed into embedded systems in order to compete against other kinds of embedded processors.  Smartphones and tablets themselves are already Read more...

Adapteva's Epiphany Floating Point Processor Core: A Leading-Edge Lithography May Finally Open Doors

Cost- and power consumption-sensitive digital signal processing applications tend to leverage fixed point processors, for a common fundamental reason: fixed-point processor cores are substantially less complex than their floating-point counterparts, leading to reductions in transistor count and silicon area. Yet fixed-point processing comes with trade-offs of its own; code development, for example, is complicated by the need to comprehend the potential for overflow, underflow and round-off Read more...

QDSP6 V4: Qualcomm Gives Customers and Developers Programming Access to its DSP Core

"There's been at least one DSP core in every chip that Qualcomm's ever made." Qualcomm senior director of product management Rick Maule used this statement as his lead-in to an explanation of the latest-generation QDSP6 architecture, specifically where it fits in the company lengthy DSP development heritage. QDSP6, if you haven't already figured out, refers to Qualcomm's sixth-generation DSP core architecture and is also commonly referred to by its "Hexagon" marketing moniker. The sixth- Read more...

Analog Devices' Latest Blackfin Proliferations Get Embedded Vision Religion

It's a safe bet that when a chip company devotes precious development time and manpower, not to mention silicon area, to a specialized function, that company feels confident that it's going to get a notably positive return on its investment. Take Intel, for example, which embeds a video processing block called Quick Sync in its Sandy Bridge and successor Ivy Bridge processors, in striving to maximize performance and minimize power consumption versus host CPU- or integrated GPU-based video Read more...

The CEVA-MM3101: An Imaging-Optimized DSP Core Swings for an Embedded Vision Home Run

As last summer's formation of the Embedded Vision Alliance suggests, the transition from computer-based intelligent image processing to more compact, cost-effective and energy-efficient embedded vision products is already well underway. CEVA, a company to date best known for its digital signal processing cores found in cellular baseband IC designs, hopes to harness this trend (and, in the process, expand its serviceable market footprint) with the CEVA-MM3101, its latest imaging-tailored Read more...

Embedded Vision Alliance Forms to Catalyze Practical Applications of Computer Vision

A new industry association, the Embedded Vision Alliance, is being formed to help embedded system designers harness computer vision in their products.  BDTI, which has initiated the partnership, believes that computer vision—extracting meaning from images and video—is poised to proliferate into a wide range of applications in the next few years. The success of the Microsoft Kinect—which has become the fastest-selling consumer electronics device in history, selling 10 million units in its first Read more...

TI Expands Video-Centric DaVinci Processor Family

Combining a CPU core, DSP core, and numerous video accelerators, new additions to the Texas Instruments (TI) DaVinci video-centric processor line target applications ranging from personal media players to multi-channel digital video recorders and professional broadcasting systems. The new chips comprise two families: The TMS320CDM814x (DM814x) family is optimized for low power consumption; these chips support a single video channel at 1080p resolution and 60 frames per second (fps), or three Read more...

New TI Pin-Compatible Processors Integrate ARM, DSP, and Graphics

Texas Instruments (TI) has announced four new ARM-based processors under the Sitara and Integra brand names. These processors are part of a pin- and software-compatible family that offers optional DSP and graphics accelerators to address applications with a wide range of performance requirements. Two of the new processors are additions to the existing Sitara family, while two carry the new Integra brand name. The latest Sitara processors—the AM3892 and AM3894—feature an ARM Cortex-A8 core Read more...

Texas Instruments’ Graphical Programming Tool Generates Prototyping Code

Texas Instruments (TI) recently introduced C6EZFlo, a graphical programming tool for its C6000 and DaVinci DSP families.  C6EZFlo is a prototyping tool to help users quickly develop initial software implementations of their applications.  In particular, C6EZFlo is designed to help programmers develop initialization, configuration, and framework code for their applications.  C6EZFlo generates C code and project files intended to be loaded into TI’s C language Code Composer Studio tool suite Read more...