InsideDSP — In-depth analysis and opinion

Next-Generation Power Architecture-Based SoCs Embrace Advanced Lithography, Core Virtualization, SIMD Instruction Set

Freescale's re-engagement with historical Power Architecture (previously known as PowerPC) CPU business segments, such as communications, industrial, medical, military, robotics, and surveillance systems, began in earnest at the June 2008 Freescale Technology Forum when the company unveiled its first QorIQ (pronounced "Core IQ") product families. Responding to longstanding market requests for multi-core offerings, which to date had been addressed by only a single member of the PowerQUICC III Read more...

Case Study: Reliable Benchmark Results Lead to Good Design Decisions

To paraphrase business guru Peter Drucker, "If you can't measure it, you can't design it."  In the world of embedding processing, processor developers and users alike rely on benchmarks to measure and assess the capabilities of embedded processors on their target applications.  Benchmark results enable processor developers to understand where they stand in relation to their design targets and their competitors.  And in order to build competitive product and get to market quickly, system and Read more...

Jeff Bier’s Impulse Response―How to Make a Really Annoying Demo

Last month I wrote about some of the ways in which trade show booths often fail to engage trade show visitors. This month I'd like to turn to a related subject: product demos. Demos can be an extremely powerful tool. They can also be annoying, frustrating distractions. After sitting through literally hundreds of demos—and being involved in creating a few—I've started to see some patterns in what separates effective demos from the rest of the (unfortunately much more numerous) pack. For your Read more...

Start-Up Naratte Launches Novel Ultrasonic Near-Field Communications Solution

Near-field communications (NFC), which traces its heritage to radio-frequency identification (RFID), has lately been promoted as a way to enable mobile phones and other portable devices to serve as electronic wallets. Early examples of the technology, operating on the 13.56 MHz ISO/IEC 18000-3 air interface with transfer rates ranging from 106 kbps to 848 kbps, exist today in cellular handsets such as Google’s Nexus S, developed by Samsung and leveraging a NFC transceiver from NXP Read more...

TI Targets Small Cells with New Multi-Core SoCs

Texas Instruments (TI) is continuing to expand its cellular base-station SoC family, incorporating multiple instances of the TMS320C66x (C66x) DSP core that the company introduced in early 2010. The new TMS320TC16612 (TCI6612) and TMS320TC16614 (TCI6614) chips target femtocell (approximately 64 users) and picocell (approximately 128 users) base station designs. For the first time, TI has also integrated a CPU core―an ARM Cortex-A8―to handle control and management functions. The new chips will Read more...

Case Study: Maximizing DSP Software Performance on ARM Processors

A decade ago, ARM processors were mainly found in cell phones, disk drives, and few other specialized applications.  These days, they seem to be everywhere, from microcontrollers to tablet PCs.  During this same time period, digital signal processing (DSP) tasks—such as multimedia and communications functions—have also become increasingly common in a wide range of systems.  Given these two trends, it’s no surprise that there’s been a big uptick in products using ARM processors to implement Read more...

Jeff Bier’s Impulse Response―Have We Forgotten the Basics?

I recently spent a day at the Design Automation Conference (DAC)—an event that has been a mainstay of the EDA industry for many years.  One of the interesting things about the exhibit floor at DAC is that you always find a mixture of new companies—often with interesting new ideas—alongside established names that have been pillars of the EDA community for decades. It’s a bit of an adventure to walk the aisles and see what’s being offered. Unfortunately, exploring a trade show exhibit floor Read more...

Embedded Vision Alliance Forms to Catalyze Practical Applications of Computer Vision

A new industry association, the Embedded Vision Alliance, is being formed to help embedded system designers harness computer vision in their products.  BDTI, which has initiated the partnership, believes that computer vision—extracting meaning from images and video—is poised to proliferate into a wide range of applications in the next few years. The success of the Microsoft Kinect—which has become the fastest-selling consumer electronics device in history, selling 10 million units in its first Read more...

MathWorks Extends Code-Generation Capabilities Across its Tool Portfolio

The MathWorks—maker of MATLAB modeling environment—has launched a trio of new code-generation tools called MATLAB Coder, Simulink Coder, and Embedded Coder. With these automatic code-generation products, The MathWorks aims to eliminate the need for development teams to maintain parallel development efforts—modeling algorithms in MATLAB, for instance, while separately coding in C or C++ for embedded implementation. MATLAB users will get direct code-generation capability for the first time Read more...

TI Expands Video-Centric DaVinci Processor Family

Combining a CPU core, DSP core, and numerous video accelerators, new additions to the Texas Instruments (TI) DaVinci video-centric processor line target applications ranging from personal media players to multi-channel digital video recorders and professional broadcasting systems. The new chips comprise two families: The TMS320CDM814x (DM814x) family is optimized for low power consumption; these chips support a single video channel at 1080p resolution and 60 frames per second (fps), or three Read more...