Processors

Jeff Bier’s Impulse Response—Gate Counts Don’t Count

Every so often I get a call from someone who wants to know the gate count (or equivalently, the silicon area) of some embedded processor core. And every time this happens, I have to stifle the urge to say “Why on earth do you care?” The reason the question baffles me is that, in chips that use embedded processor cores, the area used by the core is almost always negligible compared to the area eaten up by memory banks. It’s common for the processor core to consume only about 10% of the die Read more...

Freescale Announces New Multicore DSP

On May 16, 2006 Freescale announced the MSC8144, the first chip in its third generation of multi-core digital signal processors. The MSC8144 will feature four of StarCore’s latest SC3400 DSP cores operating at up to 1GHz. The rest of the chip, including memory systems and an I/O coprocessor, can operate at up to 400 MHz. The chip incorporates considerable on-chip memory, with 16 Kbyte instruction and 32 Kbyte data caches for each DSP, a 128 Kbyte L2 instruction cache shared by all DSPs, 512 Read more...

Case Study: Custom Benchmarks

Even for established system designs that have had success using a particular processor, rapidly evolving application requirements and frequently changing processor offerings may necessitate a reevaluation of which processor best meets the product’s needs. The outcome of such a reevaluation can have profound and lasting effects on the future of the product; for example, whether it is competitive in terms of performance, energy efficiency, and cost. Unfortunately, system designers often have Read more...

Morpho, picoChip Introduce Reconfigurable Solutions for Wireless

Morpho Technologies and picoChip both recently introduced reconfigurable-processor-based solutions targeting WiMAX applications. The Morpho solution, which targets terminal applications, is a combination of software and licensable hardware IP for use in custom chips. The Morpho hardware IP is based on the “MS2,” Morpho’s second-generation reconfigurable processor core. Morpho’s hardware IP also includes a coprocessor for Viterbi and turbo encoding and decoding, as well as an interface for Read more...

Jeff Bier’s Impulse Response—Multiprocessors: Back to the Drawing Board

You’ve probably been hearing a lot of buzz lately about multiprocessor chips. Putting multiple processors on a chip isn’t a new idea, of course. But such chips are gaining significant momentum both in general-purpose computing applications and in embedded systems. In the world of embedded digital signal processing applications, multiprocessor chips are becoming attractive for an expanding range of systems—even cost-sensitive applications like consumer products. As a result, effective software Read more...

Tensilica Introduces Pre-Configured Cores

Last month Tensilica announced a new line of licensable processor cores called the Diamond Standard family.  The new family is based on Tensilica’s Xtensa family of licensable cores, but there is an important difference between the two families:  The Xtensa cores can be customized by licensees, but the Diamond cores cannot be customized.  Hence, the Diamond cores are essentially fixed, pre-configured versions of the Xtensa architecture. The Diamond family includes six family members Read more...

New MIPS Core Supports Multithreading

This month MIPS announced its first multi-threaded licensable core, the MIPS32 34K.  The multi-threading capabilities of the 34K are highly unusual—not only in comparison to the other MIPS cores, but also in comparison to most other embedded processors. Multithreading is a technique for running multiple pieces of code, called “threads,” in parallel with one another.  Multithreading is similar to multitasking, a technique for running multiple “processes” in parallel with one another.   A key Read more...

New TriCore DSCs Target Motor Control

Last month Infineon introduced two new TriCore-based processors, the TC1161 and TC1162. These new chips join Infineon’s TC1xxx family of chips targeting motor control and other computationally demanding industrial signal processing applications. (Chips targeting this space are often called digital signal controllers, or DSCs.) The new TC116x chips are much less expensive than the older TC1xxx family members. The TC1161 and TC1162 are priced at $11 and $12, respectively. In comparison, the Read more...

Jeff Bier’s Impulse Response—Are DSPs Disappearing?

Looking back at the past year, a striking trend emerges: Increasingly, the hardware used for signal processing is something other than a DSP. I made a quick survey of the year’s developments by skimming the archives on www.bdti.com/InsideDSP. I discovered that only about half of the chips BDTI wrote about in 2005 were DSPs. The rest of the chips were general-purpose processors, FPGAs, or other types of hardware. Admittedly, this hardly qualifies as a scientific survey, but the results reflect Read more...

TI Launches First “DaVinci” Video Processors

Last week TI unveiled its first “DaVinci”-branded processors, the TMS320DM6443 and the TMS320DM6446. These processors target home entertainment, surveillance, and other video applications. The two chips are similar in many respects. Each chip contains a 300 MHz ARM9E general-purpose processor core, a 600 MHz ‘C64x+ DSP core, and connectivity peripherals such as USB and Ethernet ports. The differences between the chips reflect the fact that the ‘DM6446 targets both video encoding and Read more...