InsideDSP — In-depth analysis and opinion

PicoChip: Defying the Odds

Editor’s Note: The past year or so has brought a wave of parallel-processor start-ups pursuing digital signal processing applications.  But what about the previous wave?  In the late 1990s and into 2001, a large number of start-ups emerged with unique processor architectures targeting applications like wireless infrastructure.  The vast majority of these, such as Chameleon, Morphics, and Quicksilver, are long gone.  PicoChip, founded in 2000, is an interesting exception.  In this article, Read more...

Altera Hones DSP Capabilities with Stratix III FPGAs

In November Altera announced the Stratix III family, its next generation of field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs). The new devices will be fabricated in a 65 nm process and feature a number of significant architectural changes.  To reduce power consumption, Altera has introduced “Programmable Power Technology,” which allows blocks of logic that don’t need to run at maximum speed to run in a slower, low-power mode.  The sizes of hard-wired memory blocks have been changed relative to the Read more...

Case Study: Creating High-Impact Product Launches

With the new year approaching, many marketing managers are readying new-product roll-outs for 2007.  One vital element of a product introduction is the briefing presentation–the pitch that will introduce customers, editors, and analysts to the new offering. How can you capture the attention of your audience and make your introduction stand out from the hundreds of others slated for early 2007?  BDTI reviews dozens of product introduction presentations every year.  In studying these Read more...

Jeff Bier’s Impulse Response—FPGAs vs DSPs: It Depends

Here at BDTI, we just wrapped up a new study comparing DSP-oriented FPGAs to DSP processors.  Like many DSP engineers, I started the project extremely familiar with processors and relatively new to FPGAs. I've ended it with a deeper understanding of the many surprising differences between the two technologies.  I'm not talking about performance differences—though our benchmark results do show some big ones. No, what I'm talking about is how data that's straightforward to obtain for processors Read more...

Implementing SIMD in Software

Many high-performance DSP and general-purpose processors are equipped with SIMD single-instruction, multiple data) hardware and instructions. SIMD enables processors to execute a single instruction (say, an addition) on multiple independent sets of data in parallel, producing multiple independent results. SIMD support has become increasingly common because it improves performance on many types of DSP-oriented applications (which tend to perform the same operations over and over again). But Read more...

Analog Devices Grows Blackfin Family with 4 New Processors

This week, Analog Devices introduced four new members of its Blackfin processor family: the ADSP-BF549, ‘BF548, ‘BF544, and ‘BF542.  These new devices will operate at clock speeds of up to 600 MHz and are intended mainly for automotive applications that incorporate signal processing, such as digital broadcast radio receivers, navigation systems, and rear-seat entertainment equipment.  The new devices feature more on-chip memory than most Blackfin devices (only the high-performance ‘BF535 Read more...

Texas Instruments Announces DaVinci Family Extensions

Texas Instruments, Inc. (TI) this week announced four new “DaVinci”-branded processors: the TMS320DM6437, TMS320DM6435, TMS320DM6433 and TMS320DM6431. Priced at $10-23, the media processors target video applications in the car and the home. (All prices in this article are for 10,000 unit quantities.) The new devices are architecturally similar to the first DaVinci chips, the ‘DM6446 and ‘DM6443. These chips and the new ‘DM643x devices both feature a ‘C64x+ core and varying assortments of Read more...

Case Study: Getting Good Feedback to Improve Products

To improve their products, technology providers need detailed, thoughtful feedback from users of their technology. Unfortunately, this feedback is often difficult to obtain. Typical users aren’t very motivated to provide detailed feedback; they’re interested in getting their product finished. When they run into a problem, they find the most expedient work-around and move on. They don’t have time to fully explore, document, and report on the problems that hinder their productivity, or to share Read more...

Jeff Bier’s Impulse Response—Energy Efficiency Drives Processor Specialization

Recently a friend of mine was lamenting the fact that so many new processors continue to be designed, and so few achieve any commercial success. “Why do people persist in designing new processors?” he asked. “Maybe because universities keep training processor designers,” I speculated. On closer reflection, though, I believe there’s more to the story. Historically, processor designers created highly specialized DSP-oriented architectures with the goal of achieving real-time signal processing Read more...

Characterizing Licensable Core Performance

Comparing licensable processor cores and quantifying their relative performance is challenging. Unlike processor chips, there are many different ways in which licensable cores can be configured, implemented, and fabricated, each of which yields a different combination of speed, area, and power consumption. Particularly for digital signal processing applications (which tend to push the limits on one or more of these metrics) it’s essential to have reliable and accurate performance data. To Read more...