InsideDSP — In-depth analysis and opinion

Xilinx Buys AutoESL, Securing High-Level Synthesis Capabilities

Xilinx has acquired high-level synthesis start-up AutoESL Design Technologies, bringing the AutoPilot high-level-synthesis tool in-house. AutoPilot accepts a C, C++, or SystemC description of the functionality of an algorithm or task and generates a register-transfer-level (RTL) implementation in Verilog or VHDL.  The RTL implementation is then processed through the traditional FPGA RTL logic synthesis, place-and-route, and verification tool flow. Like other high-level synthesis tools, Read more...

Oxford Digital Offers Small Audio DSP Core With Graphical Programming

Even if you are a DSP industry insider, you may not have heard of UK-based Oxford Digital. Since its founding in 2006, the company has established itself primarily as a provider of design consulting services for audio applications. Through its consulting work, Oxford Digital has created a small configurable DSP core called TinyCore and an associated graphical programming environment.  With these assets in hand, Oxford Digital now aims to make its mark licensing silicon intellectual property Read more...

Jeff Bier’s Impulse Response—Consumer Electronics Manufacturers Get a Taste of Their Own Medicine

I recently returned from the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.  Well, actually, I got back over a month ago, but it feels like I just got back.  My ears are still ringing. CES is a phenomenon.  It’s big. It’s loud.  It’s crowded and inconvenient.  Come to think of it, the experience of being an attendee at CES is a lot like the experience of buying and using consumer electronics.  In several ways, CES gives consumer electronics manufacturers a taste of their own medicine. For Read more...

Case Study: Developing Attention-Getting Demos

Your company just developed the most powerful chip ever.  Your job: to get customers interested in using it in their system designs.  Challenging?  You bet.  As fantastic as its capabilities may be, your little slab of black plastic looks pretty much just like those of your competitors.  Yes, the numbers on your brochure look great.  But, let’s face it, they’re just numbers on paper.  How exciting can they be?    To capture customers’ attention and engage their imaginations, what you really Read more...

CEVA Hits 1 GHz With Latest TeakLite DSP Core

CEVA has added the CEVA-TL3211 core to its TeakLite family of licensable DSP cores targeting applications ranging from handset baseband processing to audio processing in home-network, multimedia gateway, and living-room multimedia products. According to CEVA, the new core will reach a clock speed of 1 GHz in a 40 nm implementation and includes a new fully-cached memory design. The new core bumps up the performance of the broadly licensed TeakLite family while offering binary compatibility Read more...

Freescale’s New i.MX Application Processors Scale to Quad-Core

Freescale has launched a new family of application processors—the i.MX 6—that includes single-, dual-, and quad-core members along with a complement of hardware accelerators for multimedia applications. The processors combine ARM’s Cortex-A9 CPU with a 3-d graphics controller, video processing unit (VPU), image capture function, and image processing unit (IPU). The family targets a broad range of products from monochrome e-book readers and simple tablets at the low end to netbooks and full- Read more...

Case Study: Chip Design Costs Make Processor Core Choice Paramount

As we’ve all heard, the cost of creating a custom chip has skyrocketed. Still, there are applications where a custom chip is justified—usually by specialized, demanding technical requirements. Today, custom chips often incorporate multiple processor cores.  The choice of a licensable processor core is among the first decisions that a design team makes, and may be the decision that they live with the longest:  the hassles of porting software from one processor architecture to another mean that Read more...

Jeff Bier’s Impulse Response—The Rise of Licensable Cores

Ten years ago, I wrote about how licensable processor cores were beginning to play a more important role in the industry.  Among other trends, I observed that large chip companies were beginning to adopt licensable cores for application-specific chips such as cellphone baseband SoCs, rather than using proprietary cores that they developed in-house.  This trend has certainly strengthened over the past ten years. It’s one thing for a company making application-specific SoCs—which often Read more...

Freescale Launches 4G Baseband SoC

The march toward 4G cellular networks is accelerating. For example, Verizon just lit up its LTE network in 38 U.S. cities. But widespread deployment will require lower-cost base stations.  Freescale is aiming to enable lower-cost base stations with its new baseband SoCs, introduced last month on the heels of Texas Instrument’s latest 4G offering. The new Freescale SoCs are based on Freescale’s SC3850 StarCore DSP core that, at 1.2 GHz has just achieved the top fixed-point score on the BDTI Read more...

New TI Pin-Compatible Processors Integrate ARM, DSP, and Graphics

Texas Instruments (TI) has announced four new ARM-based processors under the Sitara and Integra brand names. These processors are part of a pin- and software-compatible family that offers optional DSP and graphics accelerators to address applications with a wide range of performance requirements. Two of the new processors are additions to the existing Sitara family, while two carry the new Integra brand name. The latest Sitara processors—the AM3892 and AM3894—feature an ARM Cortex-A8 core Read more...