InsideDSP — In-depth analysis and opinion

Microchip 32-bit Microcontrollers Gain High-Precision Floating Point Capabilities

The decreasing cost-per-transistor delivered by modern semiconductor processes means that a number of previously rare embedded processor options are now increasingly common. This trend includes floating-point coprocessors, which are especially useful when migrating code originally developed on a PC to an embedded system. Recall that floating-point support on the PC wasn't a "given" until the first 1993-era Pentium processor-based systems hit the scene; earlier i486 CPUs offered the integrated Read more...

Freescale Buys CogniVue: The BDTI Interview

In September, Freescale announced its acquisition of computer vision processor IP supplier CogniVue. BDTI discussed the news with Matt Johnson, Vice President and General Manager of Freescale's Automotive MCU division, which instigated the transaction. The two companies had closely collaborated for the past several years, so the purchase wasn't a complete surprise. Still, the interview produced a number of interesting insights. Also in attendance was Simon Morris, former CEO of CogniVue (now a Read more...

Jeff Bier’s Impulse Response—Why Do Embedded Processor Software Development Tools Suck? It’s the Unknown Knowns

In 2002, in a famous piece of unintentional rhetorical artistry, U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld spoke to reporters about "known knowns" (things you're aware that you know), "known unknowns" (things you're aware that you don't know) and "unknown unknowns" (things you're unaware that you don't know). As every programmer immediately realized, the category that Rumsfeld didn't mention is the "unknown knowns" – things you know but don't realize that you know. Lately, I've come to the view Read more...

Case Study: BDTI's Expert, Independent Analysis Enables Optimum Vision Processor Selection

A growing number of products are incorporating computer vision capabilities. This, in turn, has led to rapid growth in the number of processors being offered for vision applications.  Selecting the best processor (whether a chip for use in a system design, or an IP core for use in an SoC) is challenging, for several reasons. First, these processors use very diverse architecture approaches, which makes it tough to compare them. Second, because vision applications and algorithms are also quite Read more...

Texas Instruments Sitara SoCs Integrate Diverse Processing Resources

It's becoming increasingly possible, thanks to APIs and languages such as Khronos' OpenCL, for applications to efficiently harness the heterogenous computing resources available in modern SoCs. And it's therefore increasingly common for SoC designers to include a variety of both general-purpose and function-specific parallel-processing cores on-chip, leveraging the prodigious transistor budgets available on modern lithography processes. These trends are fully evident with Texas Instruments' 28 Read more...

CEVA Software Framework Brings Deep Learning to Embedded Vision Systems

As Jeff Bier has mentioned in several of his recent columns, deep learning algorithms have gained prominence in computer vision and other fields where there's a need to extract insights from ambiguous data. Convolutional neural networks (CNNs) – massively parallel algorithms made up of layers of computation nodes – have shown particularly impressive results on challenging problems that thwart traditional feature-based techniques; when attempting to identify non-uniform objects, for example, or Read more...

Jeff Bier’s Impulse Response—When Comparing Processors, Beware of the Uncertainty Principle

My colleagues and I at BDTI frequently evaluate processors – sometimes on behalf of processor suppliers, and sometimes on behalf of processors users. Comparing processors can be complicated, given their many attributes, including some (like energy efficiency) that are difficult to compare accurately, and others (like ease-of-use) that are inherently subjective. Several recent conversations with processor suppliers have reminded me of another serious hazard in processor comparisons, one that I Read more...

Case Study: Digital Signal Processing Library Development Enables Effective Processor Deployments

As applications become more complex, and processors become more powerful, system developers increasingly rely on off-the-shelf software components to enable rapid and efficient application development. This is particularly true in digital signal processing, where application developers expect to have access to libraries of optimized building-block functions to speed their work. A leading SoC developer recently contracted BDTI to assist it in developing a comprehensive library of software Read more...

Qualcomm's QDSP6 v6: Imaging and Vision Enhancements Via Vector Extensions

Qualcomm has been evolving its in-house DSP core for many years. Originally developed for use in Qualcomm’s cellular modems, more recently it has also found use as an application co-processor, offloading multimedia tasks from the CPU in smart phones and tablets. Earlier InsideDSP articles covered the v4 "Hexagon" DSP core in mid-2012 and early 2013, along with the v5 Hexagon architecture later that same year. Now, with its Hexagon v6 DSP core, which will see its first silicon implementation in Read more...

ARC Processor Core Enhancements Promise Performance, Energy Consumption Improvements

In May 2014, Synopsys expanded its ARC EM licensable processor core product line, which BDTI described as historically being "vanilla" Harvard architecture CPUs with no DSP-optimized features, via the addition of the digital signal processing pipeline-equipped EM5D and EM7D (“D” denoting DSP). This year's follow-on EM9D and EM11D make what at first glance seem to be minor upgrades, in the form of an optional incremental 2-64 KB of special-purpose embedded memory. But, according to company Read more...