2002

PXA250-based PDA Performance Problems Probed

December 15, 2002 |

Intel’s PXA2xx processor family is making significant headway in the high-end PDA market. Last month, for example, Sony began shipping the first Palm OS-based PDA powered by a PXA2xx. Although the PXA2xx has gained wide acceptance in high-end PDAs, some reviewers (for example, at CNET.com)

December 15, 2002 |

Posted in Communication

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Last month BDTI participated in the Software Defined Radio Forum’s first conference. Judging from the presentations given at this conference, software defined radio (SDR) is quickly evolving from an interesting but somewhat academic concept to a mainstream technology. The main driver

Jeff Bier’s Impulse Response—Easy Money

December 15, 2002 |

Posted in Opinion

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In October, ARM Ltd. announced two unhappy firsts: its first-ever quarter-to-quarter sales decline, and its first layoffs. Prior to these developments, ARM seemed to have discovered a bulletproof business model that was easy to mimic: just whip up a core, license it, and let the royalty checks

Embedded DRAM Comes of Age

November 15, 2002 |

Posted in Processors

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Several vendors recently unveiled embedded processors containing large amounts of on-chip RAM—but not the SRAM usually found in embedded processor chips. Instead, these new processors integrate copious quantities of on-chip DRAM. Embedding DRAM with processing logic can greatly improve

BOPS Quietly Calls it Quits

November 15, 2002 |

Posted in Processors

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BOPS, Inc. quietly began auctioning off its patent portfolio last month, signaling the end of its operations as a vendor of high performance licensable DSP cores. Given the current business climate, the failure of another licensable core vendor is hardly surprising. (For more examples, see our

Wireless MMX: A Look Under The Hood

October 15, 2002 |

Posted in Processors

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Last month Intel announced its “Wireless MMX” extensions for its ARM-based XScale architecture. Wireless MMX includes functionality equivalent to the integer components of the x86 MMX and SSE instruction sets. Like its x86 counterparts, Wireless MMX uses single-instruction

The ZSP500: Flexibility = Speed

October 15, 2002 |

Posted in Processors

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Last week LSI Logic introduced the ZSP500, the latest member of its ZSP family of superscalar DSP cores. The ZSP500 is a dual-MAC processor, but BDTI’s analysis shows that at a projected clock speed of 325 MHz, the ZSP500 will be faster on DSP tasks than many other dual-MAC processors. For

October 15, 2002 |

Posted in Opinion

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Experienced engineers know that a comprehensive technical specification is a prerequisite for all but the most trivial projects. Without a solid spec, it is difficult to know how to begin a project, let alone deliver a high-quality product. Yet specifications are rarely complete in the sense

September 15, 2002 |

Posted in Processors

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In August, DSP Group announced CedarDSPCore, a family of licensable DSP cores that targets a wide range of applications. The CedarDSPCore family has two unusual features that lend it noteworthy flexibility. First, these cores use “computation clusters” rather than a traditional data

Notes From the TI Developer Conference

September 15, 2002 |

Posted in Processors

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At last month's TI Developer Conference, TI convened a panel discussion featuring some of its top management. This panel addressed a broad range of topics such as TI's plans for its architectures and the changing competitive landscape. One of the most interesting topics discussed was the

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2002