Because DSPs are typically assigned MAC-intensive tasks, one might assume that DSP performance is directly related to MAC throughput. In fact, vendors often advertise the speed of their DSPs in terms of MMACS (millions of multiply-accumulates per second). However, BDTI benchmark studies reveal that MAC throughput is not a reliable indicator of real-world DSP performance.

In an obscure corner of 3COM's Web site is an epitaph; a barren savannah landscape with a lone tree in the background frames the phrase "End of Life." The death in question was not that of a zebra or wildebeest—in these modern technological proving grounds it was the innovative Kerbango Internet Radio that was recently deemed unfit.

According to a recently revised market forecast by Forward Concepts (http://fwdconcepts.com), total DSP processor revenues will drop this year for the first time in the industry's 21-year history. An earlier forecast had called for a depressed 10% growth in 2001 (down from 30% growth in 2000), but this estimate has been scaled back significantly—the new projection is for a precipitous 25% drop.

Typical CPUs used to be built with hundreds of chips, each containing a few simple logic gates. Nobody uses these logic gate chips anymore, and as IC manufacturing technology improved (and Moore's Law predicted), processors shrank in size to the point that today they occupy only a small portion of a chip.

Analog Devices (ADI) announced this month the first device based on the Micro Signal Architecture (MSA), a new 16-bit fixed-point DSP architecture jointly developed by ADI and Intel. The ADSP-21535, the first in ADI's new "Blackfin" family, joins an already competitive field of low-power, moderate-performance architectures that target portable communications applications. Several attributes of the MSA, however, might well distinguish it from the rest of this pack, which includes the TI 'C55xx, the STMicroelectronics ST100, and StarCore SC100-based devices.

Three new DSP architectures were presented at the Embedded Processor Forum in San Jose last month. All three architectures are heterogeneous, i.e., they each combine a DSP with other performance enhancing hardware. All three architectures also target communications applications.

Business guru Michael Porter once observed that the U.S. railroads failed because they took too narrow a view of their business. They thought their business was just the railroads—in fact it was transportation.

During last month's ICASSP conference in Salt Lake City, NEC unveiled the SPXK5, the company's latest DSP architecture. This low-power DSP targets 3G terminal applications with a dual-MAC VLIW architecture. The SPXK5's key competitors include TI's 'C55xx line, the ST100 from STMicroelectronics, StarCore's SC110, and the Micro Signal Architecture from Analog Devices and Intel. According to NEC, samples will be available by the end of this year, with commercial production scheduled for mid-2002.