Software Development

SequenceL Programming Language, Toolset Strive to Leverage Multi-Core Processor Potential

For decades, multiprocessor systems were rare and most developers never had to think about how to program them. This began to change roughly a decade ago. In the spring of 2005, both AMD (Athlon 64 X2) and Intel ("Smithfield") unveiled x86 CPUs with dual processor cores on a single die. More recently, not only has the number of both physical and virtual on-chip cores steadily grown, the multi-core trend has also expanded into mobile and embedded applications. As multiprocessor chips become more Read more...

Case Study: Cool Algorithm, But Will It Fit in My Product?

Algorithms are the essence of digital signal processing; they are the mathematical "recipes" that transform signals in useful ways. Companies developing new algorithms, or considering purchasing or licensing algorithms, often need to assess whether an algorithm will fit within their processing budget—and thereby within their cost and power consumption targets. But estimating an algorithm's processing load can be difficult if the algorithm has not already been carefully mapped onto the target Read more...

HP, PayPal Give ARM-plus-DSP Chip a (Moon)Shot

The December 2012 edition of InsideDSP included the article "Texas Instruments' Latest KeyStone II SoCs: Is A Special-Purpose Server Strategy Feasible?," which discussed TI's 66AK2Hx SoCs for specialized server applications. Based on the company's KeyStone II architecture, 66AK2Hx chips include the same ARM Cortex-A15 cores (one, two or four per chip) plus C66x DSP cores (zero, one, four or eight) as other KeyStone II family devices such as the cellular base station-tailored C6636 introduced Read more...

Case Study: BDTI-Developed, QDSP6-Optimized Audio Algorithms Deliver the Sweet Sounds of Success

Qualcomm recently opened up the QDSP6 (aka "Hexagon") DSP core in its Snapdragon SoCs to programming access by its customers and software developer partners. Multimedia applications, for example, can benefit from leveraging QDSP6 processing resources, boosting overall performance, minimizing overall power consumption, and freeing up the CPU to tackle other tasks. And mobile application processors such as Snapdragon are increasingly finding use in a diversity of embedded applications beyond the Read more...

The Movidius Myriad 2: An Embedded Vision Processor Through and Through

Substantial industry investment in a particular application, both in terms of silicon devices and the software running on and interacting with them, is often a barometer of that application's transition toward mainstream adoption. This has definitely been the case recently for the practical implementation of computer vision technology, which for decades was limited to academic research and niche commercial uses. Now, however, the steadily improving performance, power consumption and cost- Read more...

Sensory: Voice and Face Recognition Blended Intelligently

Sensory has built its business and made its name over the past 20 years in voice detection and speech recognition, as InsideDSP's April 2013 coverage of the company's TrulyHandsFree always-on voice activation algorithm showcased. However, as Gordon Haupt, the company's director of vision technology, noted during a recent briefing, the name "Sensory" isn't speech-specific, indicative of the company’s long-term aspiration to expand beyond microphones into algorithms fed by other types of input Read more...

Case Study: Diverse Assistance Leads To Vision Processing Optimization Success

As computer vision is deployed into a variety of new applications, driven by the emergence of powerful, low-cost, and energy-efficient processors, companies need to find ways to squeeze demanding vision processing algorithms into size-, weight-, power, and cost-constrained systems. Fortunately, BDTI's foundation as a benchmarking services company has, as has been mentioned before, provided its engineers with extensive skills in optimizing software to best exploit processor capabilities. And it' Read more...

NVIDIA's Jetson TK1 Evaluation Board Gets Embedded Vision

At NVIDIA's GTC (the yearly GPU Technology Conference) in March, the company trumpeted its intentions to broadly supply the embedded market with Tegra SoCs and associated hardware and software development tools. As a specific example of this overarching strategy, NVIDIA unveiled a small form factor development kit called "Jetson TKI" (Figure 1), based on the ARM Cortex-A15-based "Logan" Tegra K1 application processor introduced in January at the Consumer Electronics Show (see sidebar "A Series Read more...

Jeff Bier’s Impulse Response—How Can We Empower Machines to Understand? (Find Out on May 29th in Santa Clara!)

If you're a regular reader of this column, you know that I'm enthusiastic about the potential of "embedded vision" – the widespread, practical use of computer vision in embedded systems, mobile devices, PCs, and the cloud. Processors and sensors with sufficient performance for sophisticated computer vision are now available at price, size, and power consumption levels appropriate for many markets, including cost-sensitive consumer products and energy-sipping portable devices. This is ushering Read more...

AMD's Kaveri: Will GPGPU Finally Become a Mainstream Reality?

Back in October 2011, InsideDSP covered both recently introduced and pending CPU-plus-GPU products from AMD, along with the cores that they were based on. At the time, AMD referred to CPU-plus-GPU integration as "Fusion"; the company has subsequently renamed such products as APUs (Accelerated Processing Units). And back then, AMD was actively selling two APU lines; "Ontario" (along with the higher-power "Zacate" variant), based on the mainstream "Bobcat" CPU core, and the higher-end "Llano", Read more...