InsideDSP — In-depth analysis and opinion

Case Study: Executive Decision Support

Technology company executives must be able to make sound business and technology decisions. To do so, they need a realistic picture of their company's strengths and weaknesses, and an accurate, comprehensive understanding of the existing and emerging competitive landscape. In short, they need an objective perspective. It can be challenging for executives to gain this perspective, though, since much of their information comes from employees within their companies. Even the most fair-minded and Read more...

CEVA Introduces Audio Solution

In June DSP core licensor CEVA announced CEVA-Audio, a licensable audio platform targeting high-volume audio applications such as portable audio players and home entertainment equipment. The CEVA-Audio platform is based on CEVA’s recently announced CEVA-TeakLite-II core. For an overview of the CEVA-TeakLite-II, see the January 2005 edition of Inside DSP. The platform also includes a memory subsystem and peripherals. The size of the memory is configurable, and includes up to 8 Kbytes of Read more...

Telairity Chip Targets High-Definition Video Encoding

Today fabless chip startup Telairity introduced its first chip, the T1P2000. The chip targets high-definition H.264 video encoding in applications such as broadcast encoders, video servers, and video authoring systems. The T1P2000 is based on the Telairity TVP400 processor core. The computational demands of high-definition H.264 encoding are enormous, and the architecture of the T1P2000 reflects these tough demands. The T1P2000 includes five Telairity TVP400 processor cores as well as a Read more...

Case Study–Benchmarks for Tools, Software Libraries, and More

System developers often rely on processor benchmarks to gauge system performance. However, the processor is just one of many components that determines overall performance. Fully understanding system performance requires careful analysis of many other elements, such as code-generation tools and third-party software libraries. Unfortunately, a host of factors can confound attempts to analyze these components. For example, it is difficult to prevent variations in programmer skill and style from Read more...

Freescale Introduces Impressive Application Processors

Last month Freescale introduced its latest application processors, the i.MX31 and the i.MX31L. The chips primarily target portable consumer electronics products such as cell phones, portable media players, and portable gaming devices. The chips also target portable medical applications and automotive entertainment. The two chips are nearly identical. Both are based on an ARM1136JF-S core running at up to 665 MHz. This core includes ARM’s “Vector Floating Point” coprocessor. Both chips Read more...

TI Tools Get Numerous Enhancements

This month TI launched the “Platinum Edition” of its Code Composer Studio integrated development environment (IDE).  The “Platinum Edition” offers a number of enhancements over previous versions.  Most notably, the IDE includes two new features intended to improve developer productivity: a “rewind” feature and a fast connect/disconnect capability. The “rewind” feature enables a programmer to reverse code execution in the simulator. (This feature cannot be used with hardware targets.) The Read more...

Case Study: Optimizing Presentations, Products, and Plans

The best way to ensure that a presentation is effective is to test it with a knowledgeable, critical, and responsive audience. A test audience can also help ensure that the content is correct, relevant, and appropriate for the intended audience. Just as important, a test audience can help presenters gauge the clarity, appeal, and impact of their pitch. After all, superb technical content serves no purpose if the audience loses interest a few minutes into the presentation. BDTI analysts can Read more...

Jeff Bier’s Impulse Response—Making Benchmarks Useful

A few weeks ago I participated in a panel discussion on benchmarking. The theme of the panel was how to benchmark multi-threaded and multi-core processors. In my view, this theme highlights a key problem with many benchmark approaches: too many benchmarks are designed to exercise hardware features, rather than to provide information that system developers need. In most embedded applications, system developers care about high-level system attributes such as low cost, long battery life, Read more...

Inside DSP on Tools: Languages for Signal Processing Software Development

Alan Kamas contributed to this article. As processors have steadily become faster and less expensive, systems with signal processing algorithms have increasingly been implemented as software running on a processor. One of the first steps in the software development process is choosing the development language. Not too long ago, the choice of language was simple: only assembly language was efficient enough to meet the demands of most signal processing applications. Now that processors are Read more...

Inside DSP on Tools: Tools Make the Difference

Software development tools are much more sophisticated than they used to be. Nowhere is that more true than in the tools used for developing signal processing software. Ten years ago, most engineers choosing a processor for a signal processing application paid scant attention to the quality of the development tools. They were far more interested in processor architecture and key performance metrics like speed, energy consumption, and cost. As long as there was an assembler, linker, debugger, Read more...