Tools

TI Tools Get Numerous Enhancements

This month TI launched the “Platinum Edition” of its Code Composer Studio integrated development environment (IDE).  The “Platinum Edition” offers a number of enhancements over previous versions.  Most notably, the IDE includes two new features intended to improve developer productivity: a “rewind” feature and a fast connect/disconnect capability. The “rewind” feature enables a programmer to reverse code execution in the simulator. (This feature cannot be used with hardware targets.) The Read more...

Inside DSP on Tools: Languages for Signal Processing Software Development

Alan Kamas contributed to this article. As processors have steadily become faster and less expensive, systems with signal processing algorithms have increasingly been implemented as software running on a processor. One of the first steps in the software development process is choosing the development language. Not too long ago, the choice of language was simple: only assembly language was efficient enough to meet the demands of most signal processing applications. Now that processors are Read more...

Inside DSP on Tools: Tools Make the Difference

Software development tools are much more sophisticated than they used to be. Nowhere is that more true than in the tools used for developing signal processing software. Ten years ago, most engineers choosing a processor for a signal processing application paid scant attention to the quality of the development tools. They were far more interested in processor architecture and key performance metrics like speed, energy consumption, and cost. As long as there was an assembler, linker, debugger, Read more...

Inside DSP on Tools: FPGA Tools Bridge Gap Between Algorithm and Implementation

Increasingly FPGAs are being used to perform signal-processing tasks, particularly in computationally demanding application areas such as video processing and communications. Their massive parallelism often allows FPGAs to handle data rates much higher than what DSPs and general-purpose processors can manage, and in today’s world of rapidly evolving applications and standards FPGAs’ programmability is an advantage over hard-wired solutions. In recent years FPGA vendors have begun to include Read more...

Inside DSP on Tools: Software Building Blocks for Signal Processing Applications

System developers are obtaining more and more of their signal processing software from outside sources, making off-the-shelf software building blocks a vitally important element of the software development process. Figure 1 summarizes the types of software building blocks available today for signal processing applications.   Evolving software demands Off-the-shelf software building blocks are increasingly popular for a number of reasons. Perhaps the most important reason is that both signal Read more...

Inside DSP on Tools: Evaluating Software Development Tools

Developing a signal processing-based system—like a cell phone or media player—can be a lot of work. Just how much work is a function of many factors, including the complexity of the application, the complexity of the hardware, and, increasingly, the quality of the development tools. Signal processing applications are getting more complicated, as is the hardware that runs them. Engineers increasingly rely on powerful development tools to help them manage this complexity. These days, “ Read more...

Case Study—Benchmarks for Tools, Software Libraries, and More

System developers often rely on processor benchmarks to gauge system performance. However, the processor is just one of many components that determines overall performance. Fully understanding system performance requires careful analysis of many other elements, such as code-generation tools and third-party software libraries. Unfortunately, a host of factors can confound attempts to analyze these components. For example, it is difficult to prevent variations in programmer skill and style Read more...

Jeff Bier’s Impulse Response—Truth in Advertising

If you are a regular reader of this column, you have probably noticed a recurring theme: signal processing applications are becoming more complicated and more varied—and so is the hardware that runs them. Ten years ago, DSPs used fairly simple architectures, and the architectures of most DSPs were similar to one another. Today, many DSPs use very complex architectures, and there is a remarkable amount of variety among DSP architectures. What's more, DSPs increasingly compete with alternatives Read more...

Jeff Bier’s Impulse Response—Optimization: It’s Not Just for Compilers

Processor vendors targeting signal processing applications have put a lot of emphasis on compilers over the last few years. Many of the new processor announcements I’ve seen recently stress “compiler friendliness” as one of the main advantages of the new architecture. And vendors like to boast about the enormous amounts of time and money they’ve spent improving their compilers. Even in the era of gigahertz processors, it is hard to meet demanding performance and cost targets without Read more...

Jeff Bier’s Impulse Response—The Alchemist’s Dream

Over the last few months I’ve noticed an increase in the number of tools that transform high-level signal-processing application descriptions into real-time implementations. The appeal of this idea is obvious. Many signal processing applications are initially designed using high-level tools and then migrated into low-level descriptions. Often this migration process involves multiple labor-intensive, error-prone steps. For example, an application might be developed using MATLAB, then re-built Read more...