Analog Devices (ADI) announced this month the first device based on the Micro Signal Architecture (MSA), a new 16-bit fixed-point DSP architecture jointly developed by ADI and Intel. The ADSP-21535, the first in ADI's new "Blackfin" family, joins an already competitive field of low-power, moderate-performance architectures that target portable communications applications. Several attributes of the MSA, however, might well distinguish it from the rest of this pack, which includes the TI 'C55xx, the STMicroelectronics ST100, and StarCore SC100-based devices.
MSA features that differentiate it from the competition include power management capabilities that allow a single device to operate at a wide variety of voltages and clock speeds, and extensive support for 8-bit ALU operations (to accelerate video algorithms). The MSA also maintains the orthogonality of a VLIW instruction set architecture without sacrificing ease of assembly language programming. BDTI's benchmark analysis of the MSA suggests that, if the ADSP-21535 achieves its projected 300 MHz clock speed, it will be approximately twice as fast as the 160 MHz TI 'C55xx and about half as fast as Motorola's 300 MHz SC140-based MSC8101. The energy consumption of the ADSP-21535 varies according to its operating voltage and clock speed. At 300 MHz and 1.5 V, the ADSP-21535 has a projected energy consumption that is about 40% higher than that of the 'C5510 and roughly three times higher than that of the MSC8101. At 100 MHz and 0.9 V, the ADSP-21535 has a projected energy consumption that is about 40% lower than that of the 'C5510 and only 25% higher than that of the MSC8101.
The ADSP-21535 is scheduled to begin sampling in September 2001. An in-depth analysis of the MSA is available in BDTI's new report, "Inside the ADI/Intel Micro Signal Architecture."
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