Imagine getting on a bus and going for a ride on the highway—with no driver. Or imagine having your car tell you that you’re about to hit a traffic snarl and suggest an alternate route. Pretty cool, right? These applications are possible only with advanced digital signal processing—not only inside the vehicle, but outside as well.

Trends in Automotive Signal Processing
Signal processing is pervasive in today’s vehicles, in applications ranging from engine controllers to entertainment systems. With annual automotive sales now at roughly 60 million units worldwide, it's clear that automotive applications represent a major market for signal processing technology. And as shown in Figure 1, the market for automotive signal processing is expected to grow at a healthy pace.

The digital audio product
Digital audio products are complex systems, comprised of numerous software and hardware subsystems. If you've already read "Anatomy of a Modern Digital Audio Product" you've seen many of these subsystems and how they work together. At the heart of the digital audio system is a microprocessor tasked with rendering audio.

You’re driving along in your new sports car, cruising up the coast and listening to your CD player. “How I love digital signal processing,” you think to yourself as you crank up your favorite tune. What you may not realize is that digital signal processing is doing a lot more in your car than just playing music. That smooth-sounding hum from your engine is enabled by a range of sophisticated algorithms that are responsible for everything from knock detection to managing engine air flow.

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.

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.

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.

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.