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Vol. II, No. 4 BDTI's DSP Insider April 1, 2002
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This month:
*** TI Introduces Incredible High-Performance DSP Family
*** ARM Gives DSP Customers "Finger"
*** "Impulse Response," a news analysis and opinion column written
by Jeff Bier, BDTI's General Manager, and featured in EE Times
*** BDTI, PFN Announce "Nostradamus" Reports
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*** TI Introduces Incredible High-Performance DSP Family
Last week TI unveiled its new TMS320C68xx family of high-performance,
VLIW-based DSPs, targeting communications infrastructure and other
performance-hungry applications. According to TI, the new processor
is 10E+10 times faster than any existing DSP. As a result, TI expects
that a single TMS320C68xx device will be able to replace the entire
DSP production of TI and all of its competitors.
According to TI product manager Dirk Overs-Tate, "This new DSP is so
fast, one will be enough. TI's new 'HyperShare(TM)' technology will
allow all the world's DSP-based products to share a single TMS320C68xx
device using TI's patented PQTP(TM) (Plastic Quantum Tunneling
Package) packaging technology."
In a related development, TI's calculator division announced the new
TI-299DSP engineering calculator, specifically designed to help TI's
customers make calculations of the performance of TI's new DSP. "The
need for the TI-DSP299 Engineering calculator was obvious," said Dirk.
"Customers were consistently having trouble verifying the performance
of many of TI's highest-performance DSPs; the TI-DSP299 should put an
end to that!"
The first TMS320C68xx devices are expected to begin sampling in 4Q22,
according to TI, with a pricing of $10E+20 in quantities of one.
*** ARM Gives DSP Customers "Finger"
Last month, ARM announced a new adjunct to its popular "Thumb"
instruction set extensions. According to ARM, this new instruction
set, called "Finger," beefs up the DSP capabilities of the Thumb
instruction set extensions. "With the combination of Thumb and
Finger, ARM has put market-leading DSP performance within the grasp of
our customers," said Roger Handy, ARM's DSP Program Manager.
The new instruction set should be particularly welcome news at Palm,
which is porting the Palm operating system to the ARM platform. The
multimedia applications being designed for next-generation handheld
computers will require far more DSP performance than Thumb provides,
yet developers must ensure that program memory use does not get out of
hand. Now that ARM will be in Palm, the combination of Thumb and
Finger should make designing powerful, memory-efficient multimedia
applications a snap.
Existing ARM customers can upgrade from Thumb to Finger free of
charge. "Many of our customers found they just couldn't suck enough
DSP performance out of Thumb--we've really been up to our elbows in
complaints," said Handy. "Today we are giving these customers the
Finger [design kit]." ARM's customers will undoubtedly appreciate
this gesture of good will.
*** Impulse Response, by Jeff Bier
The End of the Dark Days?
What's behind the ongoing, unprecedented downturn in the IC industry?
Many analysts attribute the massive slowdown to the inherently
cyclical nature of the semiconductor business, where the long lead
times and massive investments required to build new fabs make planning
difficult. Others blame the Internet bubble of the late '90s, which
fueled an unsustainable frenzy of equipment purchases and
infrastructure deployment.
Though it may be painful to acknowledge, I think it's time we
recognized that the real answer lies much closer to home. Integrated
circuits have been around for forty years. During that period of time
advances in density and speed have been breathtaking. Yet, despite
this whirlwind of innovation, one thing has remained stubbornly
unchanged. Pop your PC's case open and what do you see? A bunch of
black rectangles with little silver-colored feet. Pry open your cell
phone or PDA and... same thing.
We've had color TVs in our living rooms for decades. We have color
printers in our offices. Our PDAs have color screens. But our chips
come only in Henry Ford black. Isn't something wrong with this
picture? Clearly, the time has come for our electronics to join the
Technicolor Revolution. Indeed, market research from Upfront Ideas
indicates that consumer demand for iMacs (and other come-lately
translucent offerings) would be overwhelming if the chips themselves
were translucent and color-coordinated with the exterior case.
But the main reason we need to spruce up our ICs is that engineers are
bored. Who can get excited about designing yet another board full of
black chips? Chip manufacturers must immediately start packaging
their chips in new colors and, like clothing makers, must introduce
new colors every season. For this summer, I predict that earth tones
will be "in" for processors and memory chips, while analog chips will
branch out with pastels. Every design engineer will now also be a
fashion engineer--think of the excitement!
So... how about a nice mauve SDRAM to go with that ecru MCU?
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*** BDTI, PFN Announce "Nostradamus" Reports
BDTI today announced a joint venture formed with the Psychic Friends
Network (PFN). This collaborative effort, called "Project
Nostradamus," will allow BDTI to provide in-depth analysis of DSP
technology that has yet to be developed. This new joint venture will
prove extremely helpful to product planners and others involved in
long-term projects.
BDTI and PFN plan to release the first "Nostradamus" report when the
moon is in the seventh house and Jupiter aligns with Mars. Early
results from this analysis show that Motorola will soon rekindle an
old relationship with a long-lost tool chain vendor, while Analog
Devices will release a new processor that is dark and mysterious.
For more information about this report, do not attempt to contact BDTI
or PFN. We will call you. Especially you, Jacob Holtz. We can sense
that you will need our analysis soon.
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*** About BDTI
BDTI is an independent source for DSP technology analysis and
optimized DSP software, blah, blah, blah, blah...
We're also a bunch of jokers and if you haven't caught on yet, April
Fool!
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The next--serious--issue of BDTI's "DSP Insider" is coming April 8.
Previous issues of BDTI's "DSP Insider" are archived on BDTI's Web
site. Follow the link from http://www.BDTI.com/dspinsider.htm.
If you have comments, suggestions, or other feedback about the "DSP
Insider," please send email to dspinsider@BDTI.com.
BDTI's DSP Insider is a free monthly electronic newsletter published
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BDTI's DSP Insider (c) 2002 Berkeley Design Technology, Inc.
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