The one-line statement, “BOPS Inc. has ceased operations,” is all that remains at www.BOPS.com. Although there was no formal announcement of BOPS’s demise, the company’s closure has been common knowledge for some months.

Last month BDTI participated in the International Signal Processing Conference and Global Signal Processing Expo (ISPC/GSPx) held in Dallas, Texas. The conference included many insightful presentations on tough signal-processing problems. The presenters represented a mix of corporations and universities, and topics ranged from practical tips to esoteric algorithms.

In his keynote address at last month’s International Signal Processing Conference, Professor Alan Oppenheim showed how traditional signal processing methods can clash with advances in computing hardware. Professor Oppenheim compared two approaches to implementing the discrete Fourier transform. Most DSP engineers assume that the usual approach, the fast Fourier transform (“FFT”), is always the most efficient. However, Professor Oppenheim showed that the FFT is less efficient than other approaches on some important classes of processors.

Reconfigurable processors have long shown great promise for performance-hungry signal processing applications, but these architectures have garnered little mainstream acceptance. This may be changing, though; recent announcements suggest reconfigurable processors may soon become common in 3G base stations.

A 1995 survey found that 17% of VCR clocks were flashing “12:00.” This fact may make a great joke for a stand-up comedian, but it highlights a serious problem for consumer electronics companies: user interfaces are rarely user-friendly. While most people can live with a flashing VCR clock, poor interfaces are slowing the acceptance of advanced consumer electronics.

Editor’s Note: In the last month there has been a deluge of chips announced for wireless products. Many of these announcements came from industry leaders, and many of the announcements introduced significant new technologies. While we can’t cover all of the significant announcements from the last two months in this issue of the DSP Insider, we’ll highlight some of the most notable developments in the following feature article.

Today, TI introduced two 3G chipsets, one for handsets and one for base stations. Although TI and other vendors have long offered handset chipsets, TI’s base station chipset is the first from a major semiconductor vendor. ASIC-plus-DSP designs dominate the base station market for a number of reasons, including high computational loads, power constraints, and cost pressures. Nonetheless, TI says the superior cost and performance of its chipset will enable it to displace ASIC-based designs.

Last August, LSI Logic announced a new member of its LSI40x DSP processor chip family, the LSI403LP. The new chip targets cost- and power-sensitive applications, particularly audio and voice processing. LSI says that at 150 MHz and 1.2 volts the LSI403LP burns just 55 mW of power—an impressively low figure. According to LSI, the chip has now reached production and is available at 150 MHz for about $10 in 10K quantities.