Software Development

Jeff Bier’s Impulse Response—Practical Portable Parallel Programming?

By now, most people who work with processors—whether in data centers, PCs, mobile devices, or embedded systems—understand that parallel processing is the way to get both high compute performance and good energy efficiency for most applications. And most of these people also realize that programming parallel processors is challenging. There are many different types of parallel processors, including CPUs with single-instruction/multiple data capabilities, multi-core CPUs, DSPs, GPUs and FPGAs, Read more...

Case Study: Squeeze Code and Make Space for New Features

Semiconductor memory is increasing in capacity and becoming more cost-effective all the time. Yet, plenty of deeply embedded applications still exist for which every spare byte of RAM or flash memory is a precious commodity, especially those leveraging on-SoC storage versus discrete components. Tack on a performance-constrained DSP, intentionally speed-hampered to minimize power consumption, and a limited-capacity battery coupled with a multi-day or -week operating life expectation, and you've Read more...

SigmaDSP: Analog Devices Upgrades the Product Line Significantly

Those of you familiar with Analog Devices' longstanding presence in the DSP market, via the company's Blackfin, SHARC and TigerSHARC product lines, can be forgiven for assuming that SigmaDSP is yet another family of general-purpose DSPs (Figure 1). Figure 1. SigmaDSP is an audio-focused entry-level family offering in Analog Devices' digital signal processing product portfolio. SigmaDSP does implement audio-centric digital signal processing functions, which explains the "DSP" in the name. Read more...

Case Study: Digital Signal Processing Library Development Enables Effective Processor Deployments

As applications become more complex, and processors become more powerful, system developers increasingly rely on off-the-shelf software components to enable rapid and efficient application development. This is particularly true in digital signal processing, where application developers expect to have access to libraries of optimized building-block functions to speed their work. A leading SoC developer recently contracted BDTI to assist it in developing a comprehensive library of software Read more...

Vision-Based Advanced Driver Assistance: TI Hopes You'll Give Its Latest SoCs a Chance

Embedded vision, the use of computer vision techniques to extract meaning from visual inputs in embedded systems, mobile devices, PCs and the cloud, is rapidly becoming a significant adopter of digital signal processing technology and techniques. This fact is likely already well known to those of you familiar with the Embedded Vision Alliance, which BDTI founded more than two years ago. If you've visited the Alliance website, you're probably already aware from the content published there that Read more...

Imperfect Processing: A Functionally Feasible (and Fiscally Attractive) Option, Says Singular Computing

Conventional wisdom dictates that an arithmetic circuit that generates inexact results is faulty. But Joe Bates, founder and president of Singular Computing, thinks that conventional wisdom may be mistaken, at least for certain classes of applications. Bates, in his own words, has spent roughly half his professional life in academia and the other half involved with various startups. Reflective of the former focus, he is also an adjunct professor at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) and has held Read more...

Data Compression Innovator Samplify Rumored to be For Sale

[Editor's Note: In July, BDTI received a technology update briefing from Samplify, a start-up that has pioneered innovative approaches to, and applications of, data compression in embedded systems. Subsequently, rumors came to our attention suggesting that Samplify's investors are looking to sell the company. In response to our inquiry on this point, a Samplify representative said that it is company policy not to comment on speculation.] Many modern embedded systems require enormous data Read more...

Case Study: Chip Vendors, Walk a Mile in Your Customers’ Shoes

Let’s face it: Applications are getting more complicated.  Chips are getting more complicated.  And engineering teams are generally getting smaller, not larger.  As a result, it’s incumbent on chip vendors to provide robust, easy-to-use development kits.  Design engineers rely on these kits to quickly evaluate chips and prototype key portions of their systems. Clearly chip manufacturers recognize that development kits are important, and there are hundreds available.  But the quality of these Read more...

CEVA's Multimedia DSP Cores: A Framework for Accessing Them, and a New MM3101 Imaging Algorithm

In January 2013, InsideDSP covered the CEVA-MM3101, the company's first DSP core targeted not only at still and video image encoding and decoding tasks (akin to the prior-generation MM2000 and MM3000) but also at a variety of image and vision processing tasks. At that time, the company published the following table of MM3101 functions that it provides to its licensees (Table 1): Table 1. The initial extensive software function library unveiled in conjunction with the CEVA-MM3101 introduction Read more...

Case Study: BDTI-Developed, DSP-Enabled Algorithms Optimize Speaker Sound

The tension between cost and quality is one of the fundamental tradeoffs in the design of consumer electronics devices—and many other systems. Customers predominantly select among competing products based on price, especially in these challenging economic times, but consumers are also unwilling to short-change perceived quality. For example, to minimize bill-of-materials costs, engineers prefer to incorporate low-cost speakers in their designs. These entry-level transducers typically exhibit Read more...