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Vol. I, No. 4 BDTI's DSP Insider August 2001
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This month:
*** Philips and Frontier Design form Adelante Technologies
*** DSP Growth Stunted
*** DSP Software Function Libraries Ease Application Development
*** "Impulse Response," a news analysis and opinion column written
by Jeff Bier, BDTI's General Manager, and featured in EE Times
*** New "Inside" Reports on StarCore and Hitachi Processors
*** BDTI at the 2001 Microprocessor Forum
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*** Philips and Frontier Design form Adelante Technologies
The embedded DSP group of Philips Semiconductors and design house
Frontier Design merged last month to form a new company, Adelante
Technologies. Philips will initially be the majority owner of
Adelante, but Philips plans to reduce its ownership below 50% as other
companies join the partnership. Adelante will integrate Philips'
32-bit REAL (Reconfigurable Embedded DSP Architecture Low cost/Low
power) DSP core with Frontier's tools and applications knowledge; the
result will be a licensable DSP core that targets high-volume consumer
applications like 3G wireless handsets and high-performance digital
audio players.
This spin-off approach is not new—Philips itself employed a similar
tactic with its TriMedia VLIW media processor, which was spun off into
TriMedia Technologies. The strategy makes sense—designing,
supporting, and marketing licensable cores requires a more nimble
business model than larger companies like Philips are traditionally
comfortable with. Moreover, a major challenge involved when chip
vendors license architectures—that one's customers will often be
one's competitors—is sidestepped when the architecture becomes the
property of a new company. By spinning off, parent companies are able
to maintain an interest in the new venture while increasing the new
architecture's chances for success. An analogous trend has been
visible among large companies like Siemens and Lucent, who spun off
their respective chip units into Infineon and Agere.
Adelante hopes that its flexibility and technology will win it
licensing customers in a market where many DSP cores are already
available. While Philips has embedded the REAL DSP in a variety of
chips, these chips have mainly been used in products made by Philips
itself. Thus, the REAL DSP's potential for success as a licensable
core is hard to judge. According to an earlier BDTI analysis of this
architecture, the REAL DSP has strong per-cycle efficiency, a small
die size, and relatively low memory bandwidth. Frontier's role may
well make or break the core's potential for success: quality software,
tools, and design methodology could make the REAL DSP package a very
attractive option; lack of such infrastructure could undermine the
entire enterprise.
*** DSP Growth Stunted
According to a recently revised market forecast by Forward Concepts
(http://www.fwdconcepts.com), total DSP processor revenues will drop
this year for the first time in the industry's 21-year history. An
earlier forecast had called for a depressed 10% growth in 2001 (down
from 30% growth in 2000), but this estimate has been scaled back
significantly—the new projection is for a precipitous 25% drop.
Many of the industry's key players are showing a corresponding drop in
revenues. TI is projecting third quarter revenues to drop 15% from
already depressed second quarter levels. Other major DSP suppliers,
e.g., Agere and Analog Devices, are projecting similar losses. While
the semiconductor market has traditionally been cyclical, DSPs have
thus far managed to sustain continuous year-to-year growth despite
cycles in the overall chip market. Perhaps due to the increasingly
important role that DSPs play in the semiconductor industry—in large
part a result of their crucial role in communications
applications—DSPs are no longer immune to semiconductor industry
cycles.
There is evidence that, as a result of the current slowdown,
semiconductor companies are investing less in product development.
However, this might ultimately prove beneficial to other sectors in
the industry. For example, decreased product development budgets bode
well for core licensors, who might see increased demand from companies
in need of a DSP, but without the budget to develop one internally.
Similarly with chip production, where companies like Taiwan
Semiconductor Manufacturing and United Microelectronics are well
poised to pick up the slack created by cost-cutting companies moving
to a fabless production model.
Most analysts believe that the demand for DSPs will surge again and
DSP the market will resume vigorous growth. The $64,000 question is
"when?" Forward Concepts expects the DSP industry to rebound by next
year, with strong growth rates following over the next several years.
*** BDTI Case Study
This month: DSP Software Function Libraries
Developing the software for a modern DSP application is an enormous
undertaking; doing so from scratch is even more ambitious. As the
amount of code required for these applications grows, so too does the
difficulty and importance of code optimization. DSP function
libraries—collections of flexible, reusable, and optimized DSP
software building blocks—can significantly reduce software
development time and risk.
BDTI has developed DSP function libraries for several processors,
drawing on its expertise to select the most useful functions and
develop highly optimized implementations of these functions.
Increased software development efficiency is achieved in several ways.
Some building blocks will be perfectly matched to the needs of an
application and can be used as they are. Others will be approximate
matches that can be fine-tuned to fit the application at hand. In
addition to using these optimized functions directly in applications,
DSP function libraries (and the accompanying source code) are valuable
learning tools—analysis of library functions can help developers
learn how to write their own highly optimized routines.
BDTI recently developed a DSP function library for a DSP-enhanced
general-purpose processor. DSP software function libraries can be
developed for any processor, and will accelerate the software
development process for many DSP-related applications. For more
information see http://www.bdti.com/products/services_overview.htm.
*** Impulse Response, by Jeff Bier
This month: "Core Values"
Typical CPUs used to be built with hundreds of chips, each containing
a few simple logic gates. Nobody uses these logic gate chips anymore,
and as IC manufacturing technology improved (and Moore's Law
predicted), processors shrank in size to the point that today they
occupy only a small portion of a chip.
Thus it is now possible to integrate a multitude of other
elements-memories, coprocessors, algorithm accelerators, specialized
peripherals-on a single chip with a DSP or MCU processor core. With
the key role that digital signal processing now plays in many
high-volume products, the benefits of such "system-on-chip"
integration—reduced cost, size, and energy consumption—are making
such designs a compelling option for many DSP applications.
Given this trend, might today's packaged DSP processors be displaced
by licensable cores and ultimately go the way of the simple
7400-series logic gate chips of decades past? For some applications,
at least, this seems likely.
Ten years ago there were only a few licensable DSP cores available.
Today there are many, and the options continue to expand. A wide
range of vendors have begun offering licensable DSP cores, from
upstarts like 3DSP Corporation to established industry giants, like
Philips, who are looking to build momentum behind their architectures.
Reaping the benefits of DSP cores, however, comes at a
premium. Designing a highly integrated system-on-chip requires a very
large investment, which puts cores beyond the reach of many system
manufacturers.
Thus, for now at least, licensable DSP cores will mainly be used in
very high-volume applications like cell phones. Indeed, a recent
market study by Forward Concepts found that cores licensed from DSP
Group made up a 20% share of the cell phone DSP chip market last year.
Even major chip vendors who traditionally relied on their own
proprietary DSP architectures are considering licensable
cores. Conexant, for example, recently followed IBM and Broadcom in
licensing LSI Logic's ZSP400 superscalar DSP core. Given the current
industry slowdown it's easy to see why Conexant decided to license a
DSP core: the cost of developing an in-house core and the
infrastructure required for its use (for example, software tools and
documentation) is huge—typically tens of millions of dollars.
Packaged DSP processors aren't on the verge of becoming extinct—for
many applications they will be the solution of choice for years to
come. For the highest volume applications, however, licensable cores
will play an increasingly important role.
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*** New "Inside" Reports
In the coming weeks, BDTI will publish two new "Inside" reports
evaluating processors for DSP applications. "Inside the Hitachi
SH-DSP and SH3-DSP" covers two hybrid DSP/microcontroller
architectures in Hitachi's SuperH family. The report provides
analysis and insight into the SH-DSP and SH3-DSP, highly successful
products now used in many mass market consumer devices, uncovering
the strengths—and weaknesses—of these two high volume products.
"Inside the StarCore SC110" explores the low-power VLIW single-MAC
DSP core jointly developed by Agere and Motorola. With the
high-performance SC140 targeting wireless infrastructure
applications, it seems likely that these major players in wireless
will look to apply the SC110 to handheld applications. The report, as
well as that on the SH-DSP and SH3-DSP, contains complete performance
benchmarks. Both reports are scheduled for publication in August and
pre-orders are being accepted for earliest delivery.
For more information, click on the links on BDTI's home page at
http://www.BDTI.com.
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*** BDTI Seminar at the 2001 Microprocessor Forum
Newly updated to include current high-profile as well as
soon-to-be-announced architectures, BDTI's highly-rated seminar,
"Processors for DSP," will be presented at the 2001 Microprocessor
Forum held at the Fairmont Hotel in San Jose from October 15 to 19.
This seminar will help both experienced professionals and new
entrants to the world of processors understand the choices to be made
in the ever more crowded marketplace for processors targeting DSP
applications, as well as the strengths and weaknesses of key
architectures and products.
For more information on this and other industry events, go to
http://www.BDTI.com/bdti_whatsnew.htm.
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*** About BDTI
BDTI is an independent source for DSP technology analysis and
optimized DSP software. From rigorous technical analyses of
processors for DSP, such as the "Buyer's Guide to DSP Processors," to
highly regarded technology training classes, BDTI is the
industry-independent source for reliable information on DSP
technology. For more information, visit our Web site at www.BDTI.com.
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The next issue of BDTI's DSP Insider is coming in September.
BDTI's DSP Insider is a free monthly electronic newsletter published
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BDTI's DSP Insider (c) 2001 Berkeley Design Technology, Inc.
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