2006

Jeff Bier’s Impulse Response—FPGAs vs DSPs: It Depends

December 13, 2006 |

Here at BDTI, we just wrapped up a new study comparing DSP-oriented FPGAs to DSP processors. Like many DSP engineers, I started the project extremely familiar with processors and relatively new to FPGAs. I've ended it with a deeper understanding of the many surprising differences

PicoChip: Defying the Odds

December 13, 2006 |

Posted in Communication, FPGAs, Low-Power, Processors, Software Development, Tools, Video

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Editor’s Note: The past year or so has brought a wave of parallel-processor start-ups pursuing digital signal processing applications. But what about the previous wave? In the late 1990s and into 2001, a large number of start-ups emerged with unique processor architectures

December 13, 2006 |

Posted in Audio, Benchmarks, FPGAs, Low-Power, Processors

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In November Altera announced the Stratix III family, its next generation of field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs). The new devices will be fabricated in a 65 nm process and feature a number of significant architectural changes. To reduce power consumption, Altera has introduced

December 13, 2006 |

Posted in Case Studies

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With the new year approaching, many marketing managers are readying new-product roll-outs for 2007. One vital element of a product introduction is the briefing presentation–the pitch that will introduce customers, editors, and analysts to the new offering. How can you capture

Implementing SIMD in Software

December 06, 2006 |

Posted in Processors, Software Development

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Many high-performance DSP and general-purpose processors are equipped with SIMD single-instruction, multiple data) hardware and instructions. SIMD enables processors to execute a single instruction (say, an addition) on multiple independent sets of data in parallel, producing multiple

November 15, 2006 |

Posted in Automotive, Processors, Software Development, Tools, Video

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Texas Instruments, Inc. (TI) this week announced four new “DaVinci”-branded processors: the TMS320DM6437, TMS320DM6435, TMS320DM6433 and TMS320DM6431. Priced at $10-23, the media processors target video applications in the car and the home. (All prices in this article are for 10,000

November 15, 2006 |

Posted in Benchmarks, Case Studies, Tools

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To improve their products, technology providers need detailed, thoughtful feedback from users of their technology. Unfortunately, this feedback is often difficult to obtain. Typical users aren’t very motivated to provide detailed feedback; they’re interested in getting their product

November 15, 2006 |

Posted in Audio, Automotive, Processors, Video

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This week, Analog Devices introduced four new members of its Blackfin processor family: the ADSP-BF549, ‘BF548, ‘BF544, and ‘BF542. These new devices will operate at clock speeds of up to 600 MHz and are intended mainly for automotive applications that incorporate signal

November 15, 2006 |

Posted in Opinion

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Recently a friend of mine was lamenting the fact that so many new processors continue to be designed, and so few achieve any commercial success. “Why do people persist in designing new processors?” he asked. “Maybe because universities keep training processor designers,”

November 02, 2006 |

Posted in FPGAs, Processors

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Comparing licensable processor cores and quantifying their relative performance is challenging. Unlike processor chips, there are many different ways in which licensable cores can be configured, implemented, and fabricated, each of which yields a different combination of speed, area, and power

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2006