InsideDSP — In-depth analysis and opinion

Vision-Based Advanced Driver Assistance: TI Hopes You'll Give Its Latest SoCs a Chance

Embedded vision, the use of computer vision techniques to extract meaning from visual inputs in embedded systems, mobile devices, PCs and the cloud, is rapidly becoming a significant adopter of digital signal processing technology and techniques. This fact is likely already well known to those of you familiar with the Embedded Vision Alliance, which BDTI founded more than two years ago. If you've visited the Alliance website, you're probably already aware from the content published there that Read more...

Imperfect Processing: A Functionally Feasible (and Fiscally Attractive) Option, Says Singular Computing

Conventional wisdom dictates that an arithmetic circuit that generates inexact results is faulty. But Joe Bates, founder and president of Singular Computing, thinks that conventional wisdom may be mistaken, at least for certain classes of applications. Bates, in his own words, has spent roughly half his professional life in academia and the other half involved with various startups. Reflective of the former focus, he is also an adjunct professor at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) and has held Read more...

Jeff Bier’s Impulse Response—"Could You Repeat That, Please?"

Lately I've been spending many hours on conference calls: Early morning calls with colleagues in Europe and India, mid-day calls with customers in the U.S., and late evening calls with partners in China. I often find these calls difficult and fatiguing--not because of what people are saying, but because I frequently have trouble understanding what people are saying. At first, I chalked this up to what seemed like the obvious explanations: "It's late in the day… It's my seventh call today… The Read more...

Case Study: Choose Your Desert Island Companion Wisely

Remember that childhood game where you try to decide which famous person--or which book, or whatever--you'd like to have with you, if you were to be stranded on a desert island? Well, choosing a processor is kind of like that. Except that, with a processor, it's not a game. Once you've chosen a processor, and designed your hardware and software around that processor, it becomes very expensive--and very time-consuming--to switch to another processor. So, you're likely to be stuck with whatever Read more...

Data Compression Innovator Samplify Rumored to be For Sale

[Editor's Note: In July, BDTI received a technology update briefing from Samplify, a start-up that has pioneered innovative approaches to, and applications of, data compression in embedded systems. Subsequently, rumors came to our attention suggesting that Samplify's investors are looking to sell the company. In response to our inquiry on this point, a Samplify representative said that it is company policy not to comment on speculation.] Many modern embedded systems require enormous data Read more...

Dolby Voice: A Spatially Inclusive Conferencing Choice

Our team at BDTI includes people based in California, Colorado, Illinois, and Rhode Island. And our customers are all over the world. So, we all spend a lot of time in conference calls...often-frustrating conference calls. Any of you in a similar situation will immediately know what I'm talking about. Conventional conferencing systems blend together mono narrowband signals coming from the various callers (with cellular voice being the most egregious sonic choice), outputting a mixed mono Read more...

Jeff Bier’s Impulse Response—Wearable Computing: Can "Machines that See" Enable People to See?

I've been hearing a lot about "wearable tech" for the past year or so, and lately the buzz has intensified. At Qualcomm’s recent developer conference, the chipmaker unveiled its "Toq smartwatch," which was immediately followed with another smartwatch announcement by Samsung. And at the excellent Augmented World Expo conference in June, smart eyewear like Google Glass was a very hot topic, with wearable computer pioneer Steve Mann giving a riveting presentation and displaying his collection of Read more...

Case Study: Independent Evaluation Enables a Development Kit to Hit a Home Run

BDTI is well known for its software-related capabilities: performance- and power consumption-related benchmarking, for example, along with algorithm evaluation and development and optimization work. In such projects, BDTI frequently employs semiconductor manufacturers' evaluation boards and associated software toolsets, which are often combined to create development kits. And as noted several months ago, BDTI is no stranger to hardware development, either, partnering with chip suppliers to co- Read more...

ARM's 2015 Mid-Range Platform Prep: A 32-Bit Next-Step

It will likely be news to none of you that the smartphone and tablet market has been on a steep ramp in recent years, and is expected to continue its aggressive growth for the foreseeable future (Figure 1): Figure 1. ARM forecasts continued vigorous growth for smartphones and tablets over the next few years, and requires a mid-range successor to the venerable Cortex-A9 to both continue to address customers' requirements and to fend off competitive challenges from Intel's Atom and other Read more...

Altera's Next-Generation FPGAs: Advanced Process Lithographies Lead to Performance, Power Consumption Efficiencies

Intel is widely regarded as being not only the world's largest semiconductor supplier, but also a leading-edge manufacturing process developer and implementer. While foundries such as TSMC are still finalizing their 20 nm processes, for example, Intel has been shipping 22 nm-based production ICs ("Ivy Bridge" CPUs) since May of last year; the company had previously showcased its first 22 nm test wafer at the September 2009 Intel Developer Forum. Intel similarly achieved a several-year Read more...