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| Case Study: Creating Super-efficient Embedded Software |
By BDTI, 6/18/2008
Digital signal processing algorithms are increasingly important in an expanding range of embedded systems. For example, compute-intensive multimedia functions are finding their way into applications from toys to appliances to telephones.
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| Jeff Bier's Impulse Response—Risky Business |
By Jeff Bier, 6/18/2008
If you were getting ready to buy a new high-end camcorder or a new car, chances are you’d spend some time reading independent reviews. Maybe you’d pick up a copy of Consumer Reports or Road and Track. Perhaps you’d scan Amazon.com for user evaluations. Whatever. The point is, you probably wouldn’t just make your choice based on the vendor’s marketing claims, right?
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| Xilinx Debuts Virtex-5 FXT, Expands SXT Platform |
By BDTI, 5/28/2008
 At the end of March, Xilinx announced availability of the first two members of its Virtex-5 FXT platform, the FX30T and FX70T. The Virtex-5 FXT platform is geared towards serial communications and embedded applications, and joins three other Virtex-5 platforms: the LX, which is intended for logic-intensive applications; the LXT, which targets logic and serial communications; and the SXT, which is intended for serial communications and DSP. (The “T” in the platform name indicates that the chips contain transceivers.) Target applications for the new FXT chips include video-over-IP, wireless base stations, and other high-performance applications.
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| Altera Jumps to 40 nm with Stratix IV |
By BDTI, 5/28/2008
 Not to be outdone by rival Xilinx, Altera has made a major announcement of its own. In mid-May, Altera unveiled its next-generation high-performance FPGA family, the Stratix IV, and announced that the family will be fabbed in a 40 nm TSMC process. Xilinx beat Altera to the 65 nm node with its Virtex-5 chips, but with this announcement, it appears that Altera will leapfrog Xilinx to 40 nm—assuming that Xilinx doesn’t come out with 40 nm chips before the Stratix IV is expected to start sampling, towards the end of this year.
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| Case Study: Making Compilers Smarter |
By BDTI, 5/28/2008
Fifteen years ago DSP engineers expected to write and optimize most of their software in assembly language, and they did it on DSP processors with obscure and highly specialized instruction sets. Back then, compilers for DSP processors were inefficient and couldn’t use many of the processors’ specialized performance-improving features. If you wanted to use bit-reversed addressing or circular buffers or fill delay slots, for example, you’d have to write that code yourself.
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| Jeff Bier's Impulse Response—“DSP” becomes ubiquitous, passé |
By Jeff Bier, 5/28/2008
When my partners and I founded BDTI back in the early 90’s, “DSP” was in the process of becoming both a hot technology and a widely used abbreviation. The abbreviation meant two distinct things: digital signal processing, and digital signal processor. You could usually figure out which one was meant by the context, but in some ways they were interchangeable—if you were doing digital signal processing, you were probably doing it on a digital signal processor.
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| 3DLabs Aims Massively Parallel Chips at Portable Multimedia |
By BDTI, 4/23/2008
 When people talk about massively parallel, multicore chips, they’re usually talking about chips for high-performance line-powered applications, like WiMAX base stations or desktop video processing. But 3DLabs is headed in a different direction. The fabless chip company offers a massively parallel media processor, the DMS-02, which the company says is a perfect fit for portable multimedia devices with demanding video and audio processing requirements—such as high-end cellular handsets and portable media players. According to 3DLabs, the chip is in full production and costs $40 in small (1K) quantities. The company is currently shipping chips to initial customers, including a video surveillance equipment vendor, Grandeye.
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| IBM’s Cell for Embedded? |
By BDTI, 4/23/2008
 IBM’s multicore Cell processor has garnered a lot of media attention over the last couple of years, as the multicore approach itself has become something of a juggernaut. BDTI recently investigated the current state of Cell products, and whether the architecture is likely to get significant traction in embedded applications.
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| Case Study: Where Does Your Processing Engine Fit In? |
By BDTI, 4/23/2008
Developing a new signal processing engine is expensive and risky, particularly for a small start-up or for an established company moving into an unfamiliar market. There are good reasons to take that risk: signal processing has become ubiquitous in a wide range of application areas, and offers the potential for high revenues. The flip side is that the market is already densely populated with all kinds of signal processing engines: single-core chips, multi-core chips, massively parallel processors, DSP-enhanced FPGAs, SoCs, etc. Depending on the specific target market, a new processor may find itself going head-to-head with some or all of these classes of competitor.
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| Jeff Bier's Impulse Response—Corporate Bureaucracy Blocks Innovation |
By Jeff Bier, 4/23/2008
As the president of a small company that frequently works with big companies, I am often frustrated by how long it takes to get from a handshake agreement to a signed contract. The process can be absurdly slow and painful, and that’s bad for business on both sides.
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