Analog Devices announced general sampling of the ADSP-21535 "Blackfin" DSP on September 28. The ADSP-21535 is the first processor based on the Micro Signal Architecture (MSA) jointly developed by Analog Devices and Intel. The ADSP-21535 is a 16-bit fixed-point DSP that features two MAC units and support for a range of 8- and 16-bit SIMD operations. The ADSP-21535 also features "Dynamic Power Management," which allows a single processor to operate over a range of clock speeds and operating voltages.

On December 3, Texas Instruments announced three new members of its TMS320C67xx family of floating-point processors. The TMS320C6713, which is projected to operate at 225 MHz, will be the fastest of these new processors. According to BDTI's analysis, the 225 MHz 'C6713 will be about two times faster than its main competitor, Analog Devices' 100 MHz ADSP-21161.

At the Microprocessor Forum in October, ARM unveiled the next version of its instruction set, ARMv6, which all future ARM cores will support. The ARMv6 instruction set is the first from ARM to include extensive DSP-oriented instructions. Particularly interesting is the inclusion of a sum-of-absolute-differences instruction, a rather specialized instruction that is useful mainly for video compression algorithms.

At the Communication Design Conference in October Lenslet unveiled its novel optical digital signal processing engine (ODSPE), which, it hopes, will boost DSP performance to the level of tera operations per second—far above the current level of giga operations per second found in today's electron-based processors. This technology targets a wide range of applications that include both wireless and wireline communication systems.

At the Microprocessor Forum in October, five companies unveiled new DSP architectures. This was also the debut for one of these companies, Siroyan, a UK startup backed by venture capital. Siroyan had previously been a quiet presence in the DSP world, but now it has taken a very aggressive stance on scalability—its new architecture targets applications that range from ultra cost-sensitive disk drives to high performance wireless communications infrastructure.

After Odysseus left to fight in the Trojan War, the ever-patient Penelope waited nineteen years for his return. Delayed by a few snags on the way back, he did eventually make it home, albeit much later than expected.

This phenomenon is not unknown in world of microprocessors, in which new processors are often late—sometimes very late. This is a serious problem, particularly among high performance chips. Moreover, in addition to being late, these chips are often not up to spec when they arrive.

Despite the current industry slowdown, many companies are continuing to produce new architectures for DSP applications. At the upcoming Microprocessor Forum, two startups and one established player— Siroyan, 3DSP, and LSI Logic, respectively—will disclose next generation high performance licensable DSP core architectures.

Intrinsity, a startup in Austin, Texas, recently disclosed its new Fast14 technology—a collection of design techniques that enable high-speed dynamic logic to be implemented on standard CMOS processes. This technology will facilitate clock speeds of up to 2.2 GHz. Intrinsity plans to apply this new technology to developing its own high-end embedded processors, which most likely will target the wired and wireless communications infrastructure markets.

It used to be that DSP was a niche technology because only cost-insensitive applications could afford the hardware required for serious real-time signal processing. Over time, however, the prices of DSP-capable processors and ASICs have dropped to the point that DSP is now used in many consumer products, cell phones most prominent among these. But have we begun to get carried away?

At the thirteenth annual Hot Chips Conference held at Stanford University, Professor Jan Rabaey of UC Berkeley's Wireless Research Center presented an engaging tutorial on silicon platforms for next-generation wireless systems.  Professor Rabaey emphasized several interesting themes in the course of his talk.