Audio

Case Study: Multi-Tiered Software Optimization

While nearly all signal processing applications require some degree of software optimization, some applications require a sophisticated, multi-tiered optimization approach in order to meet their performance goals. To obtain the most efficient code, DSP software must be optimized at four distinct levels. First, the software architecture and data flow must be designed to take maximum advantage of the processor’s resources. Second, the appropriate data types must be selected—too big and you’re Read more...

Jeff Bier’s Impulse Response—Signal Processing Isn't a Commodity

At the Consumer Electronics Show last month I was struck (not for the first time) by the number of consumer electronics products that rely on digital signal processing—at this point, nearly all of them. In fact, so many of today's products incorporate digital signal processing-based functions that it's tempting to start viewing these functions as commodities. But in most cases, DSP functions aren't going to become commodities anytime soon. They may be ubiquitous, but they're not Read more...

Freescale Unveils Dual-Core Audio DSPs

On January 3rd, Freescale announced the first dual-core members of its Onyx family of audio DSPs.  The first two chips in the family, the DSP56720 and DSP56721, feature two DSP5636x cores operating at 200 MHz.  The chips mainly target high-definition audio processing in next-generation DVD players. To this end, Freescale offers DSP5636x software implementing audio decoders supported by the HD-DVD and Blue-Ray standards, including Dolby Digital+, Dolby TrueHD, and DTS-HD.  In addition to DVD Read more...

Altera Hones DSP Capabilities with Stratix III FPGAs

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 “Programmable Power Technology,” which allows blocks of logic that don’t need to run at maximum speed to run in a slower, low-power mode.  The sizes of hard-wired memory blocks have been changed relative to the Read more...

Analog Devices Grows Blackfin Family with 4 New Processors

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 processing, such as digital broadcast radio receivers, navigation systems, and rear-seat entertainment equipment.  The new devices feature more on-chip memory than most Blackfin devices (only the high-performance ‘BF535 Read more...

Texas Instruments Announces $5.75 Floating-Point DSP

In September, Texas Instruments, Inc. (TI) announced the TMS320C6720 floating-point DSP. Operating at 200 MHz and priced at a modest $5.75 (unless otherwise stated, all prices mentioned in this article are for 10,000 unit quantities), the chip is the latest and least expensive member of TI’s ‘C67x family of 32-bit floating-point DSPs. It is intended for cost-sensitive applications such as musical instruments, medical imaging and biometrics. The ‘C6720 is pin-compatible with the ‘C6722 and Read more...

ARC Unveils Player Subsystem and Partnership With SMIC

On September 9th, silicon intellectual property licensor ARC made two related announcements:  It unveiled a new configurable multimedia player subsystem based on its ARC600 family of cores, and announced a new partnership with Chinese silicon foundry Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp. (SMIC).  Under ARC's agreement with SMIC, ARC licensees that design chips in China and use SMIC for fabrication will pay no up-front licensing fees, paying royalties only when their chips start Read more...

TI Introduces 8-Channel Audio Processor for Multi-Channel Audio

On June 26th Texas Instruments announced the TAS3108, a new 8-channel audio processor targeting high fidelity home and car audio. The TAS3108's predecessor was a fixed-function filter engine. Customers would specify the filter properties and receive a customized fixed-function chip. With the TAS3108, TI has made the chip programmable and allowed customers the ability to implement their own filtering algorithms. The TAS3108 contains a relatively simple fixed-point DSP core running at 135 MHz Read more...

Creating Embedded-Friendly Reference Code

Say you’ve just developed a new digital signal processing algorithm—a new audio or video codec, for example. The algorithm is intended to be ported to multiple embedded processors, including general-purpose processors (like the ARM9) and digital signal processors (like the Texas Instruments TMS320C55x). Porting an algorithm to an embedded processor is a lot of work, but many of the steps involved are the same regardless of the target processor. Therefore, it makes sense to create a version of Read more...

CEVA Introduces Audio Solution

In June DSP core licensor CEVA announced CEVA-Audio, a licensable audio platform targeting high-volume audio applications such as portable audio players and home entertainment equipment. The CEVA-Audio platform is based on CEVA’s recently announced CEVA-TeakLite-II core. For an overview of the CEVA-TeakLite-II, see the January 2005 edition of Inside DSP. The platform also includes a memory subsystem and peripherals. The size of the memory is configurable, and includes up to 8 Kbytes of Read more...