InsideDSP — In-depth analysis and opinion

Khronos Announces Cross-Platform Multimedia API

On July 6, the Khronos Group announced OpenMAX, an application programming interface (API) covering a set of basic functions used in graphics, still image, audi o, and video software. For example, OpenMAX will include API calls for video decompression sub-functions like the inverse discrete cosine transform. OpenMAX is intended to be a cross-platform API, enabling programmers to use the same function calls across a wide range of architectures. According to Khronos, OpenMAX is a response to Read more...

Freescale, TI unveil new chip variants

The introduction of the DSP56321VF275 is evidence of Freescale’s continued support of the DSP563xx, an architecture that is now about nine years old. The DSP563xx family is one of the few non-VLIW DSPs still being actively supported and hasn’t seen many additions in recent years (the last new chip in the family was announced back in January 2003). The DSP56321VF275’s relatively high price tag is surprising given its modest speed, though the chip does include a large bank of on-chip SRAM (576 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 Read more...

Jeff Bier’s Impulse Respons—Lost in Translation

Go shopping for consumer electronics today and you’ll find products that use Intel processors, run Microsoft operating systems, and feature brand names like Dell and HP. It’s remarkable to see so many familiar names from the PC world showing up in consumer electronics-remarkable, but not surprising. The PC market once drove the digital revolution, but the PC market is now fairly mature and stable. Today, the action is in consumer electronics, where growth is strong and innovation abounds. Read more...

New FPGAs Target Signal Processing

In the last month, FPGA vendors launched a wave of architectures targeting signal processing. These new architectures—the Xilinx Virtex-4, the Lattice Semiconductor LatticeECP, and the Altera Cyclone II—differ in many important respects, but all three feature hard-wired multipliers sprinkled among their reconfigurable logic elements. Xilinx's new offering, the Virtex-4, targets high-performance applications. The Virtex-4 family contains three distinct sub-families that Xilinx calls " Read more...

Case Study—Measuring Processor Energy Consumption

Energy consumption is a chief concern for many digital signal processing applications, especially for portable applications where battery life is paramount. In these applications, an accurate understanding of energy consumption is critical to processor selection and to system design. Unfortunately, many obstacles hinder comparisons of processors' energy consumption. One key problem is that vendors usually report power consumption, not energy consumption. Calculating energy consumption— Read more...

Jeff Bier’s Impulse Response—The Invincible Vendor

In recent years, ARM has come to dominate the market for licensable general-purpose processor (GPP) cores. Its main competitor, MIPS, has fallen into a distant second place and most other GPP core licensors are niche players. ARM has become so dominant that its competitors are unlikely to threaten its number-one position in the near future. At first glance, a similar trend seems to be developing in the market for digital signal processor (DSP) cores. Over the last few years, the Read more...

Inside DSP on Low Power: Power, Energy, and Battery Life

Power, Energy, and Battery Life The terms "power" and "energy" are often used interchangeably. Although these terms are related, they describe different concepts. Power consumption is the rate at which a device consumes energy. In other words, if a device consumes a fixed amount of power P over time t, then energy = P x t. An obvious (but important) point is that energy consumption can be reduced by minimizing P, t, or both. While it is common to hear discussions about low-power design, Read more...

Inside DSP on Low Power: Designing Low-Power Signal Processing Systems

Many embedded signal-processing systems require good energy efficiency. Some devices, such as medical implants and wireless sensors, must operate for years on just one battery charge. To do so, these devices must consume only microwatts of power—a significant design challenge to say the least! Larger devices such as cellular phones and multimedia-oriented PDAs can afford larger batteries and higher energy consumption, but they also must support heavy processing loads. Today's cellular phone Read more...

Inside DSP on Low Power: Processor Power Consumption—Beyond the Data Sheet

Processor power consumption is a hot topic today (no pun intended). Consumers' appetites for sophisticated portable electronic devices are strong. But consumers want it all: they want feature-packed devices in small, slim hand-held form factors with good battery life. To meet these expectations, system designers must give high priority to minimizing power consumption. Although portable electronic devices incorporate many subsystems that consume power, such as LCD displays and mass storage Read more...