CUSTOMERS AND THIRD-PARTY DEVELOPERS ANNOUNCE SUPPORT FOR ANALOG
DEVICES' NEW SHARC 32-BIT DSP FAMILY
--Hewlett-Packard, Peak Audio and Picker International power real-time
data acquisition, high-end audio and medical imaging systems with new
SHARC DSP. --Industry-leading hardware & software developers applaud code compatibility and multiprocessing excellence of new SHARC DSP family.
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NORWOOD, Mass. (June 24, 1998) - Analog Devices, Inc. (ADI) today
announced the first customers and third-party hardware and software
developers to support the new ADSP-21100 SHARC family of DSPs.
Hewlett-Packard, Peak Audio and Picker International have selected the
first member of ADI's new SHARC family, the ADSP-21160, which represents the industry's highest performance 32-bit DSP, for use in applications for real-time data acquisition, studio-quality audio processing and medical instrumentation, respectively.
Driven by the need to process billions of operations per second within
ever-shrinking space and power consumption budgets, these applications
leverage the built-in multiprocessing features of the ADSP-21160 SHARC
DSP. (For more information on the ADSP-21100 SHARC family and the
ADSP-21160, please refer to the Analog Devices release dated June 22,
1998, "Analog Devices Introduces Industry's Highest Performance 32-bit
DSP").
ADI has built an extensive third-party network of hardware and software developers that already use 32-bit SHARC DSPs. They represent the industry's leading innovators in tools for DSP system design. The first companies to announce their plans to leverage the added performance and functionality of the new ADSP-21100 SHARC family include 3L Limited, Alacron, Inc., BittWare Research Systems, Blue Wave Systems, CASTOR Technologies, Eonic Systems, Inc., Ixthos, Inc., Mango Computers, Ltd., Precise Software Technologies, Spectrum Signal Processing, Transtech DSP and White Mountain DSP.
"The new SHARC family's code compatibility and 10X performance boost
demonstrate ADI's commitment to the lucrative high-performance segment
of the DSP market and to SHARC DSP development partners," said Gerald
McGuire, Analog Devices' 32-bit DSP Product Line Manager. "The first
processor in the family solidifies SHARC DSPs as the leading solution
for multiprocessing systems design."
"The second-generation SHARC advances floating-point performance to a
new high while capitalizing on the original family's successful
characteristics," said Tom Starnes, Director and Principal Analyst of
the Embedded Microcomponents Worldwide Research Program at Dataquest. "A vast on-chip memory and easy multiprocessor configurations have
attracted many applications to the SHARC. Code compatibility with the
original SHARC will be a boon, allowing customers to move up to the
higher performance with little grief. For those applications that can
use all the horsepower you can throw at them, the new SHARC has bite."
"ADI's existing SHARC is an ideal choice for high-performance DSP
multiprocessing applications," said Dr. Clive Irving, Senior Technology Consultant, Plextek Ltd., Cambridge, England. "The newest SHARC family member, the ADSP-21160, continues this approach, providing glueless multiprocessing features such as link ports, cluster bus, distributed bus arbitration and zero-overhead DMA."
NOTE: See attached additional customer and hardware and software
developer comments on ADI's new SHARC DSPs.
Hewlett-Packard plans to take advantage of the added performance of
ADI's ADSP-21160 in the company's digital receiver products. Peak Audio, located in Boulder, CO, will use ADI's ADSP-21160 to develop digital audio products for the professional audio industry. The company specializes in audio network design. Picker International, a General Electric Company, (GEC), p.l.c., of the United Kingdom, has chosen ADI's ADSP-21160 for use in future advanced medical imaging technologies including computerized tomography, magnetic resonance imaging, nuclear medicine and X-ray applications.
Each of these applications is characterized by the need to process
32-bit floating-point data at very high speeds. In some ultrasound
applications, for example, a basic signal processing function requires
nearly three billion operations to be processed per second. The
ADSP-21160 solves this problem by allowing designers to seamlessly
connect multiple processors in a single system.
For over a decade, ADI has focused on making DSP systems design easier
by leveraging its analog, digital and mixed-signal processing expertise. This commitment is evident in ADI processor design, VisualDSP development tools and the close integration of ADI third-party partners. Emulators, operating systems, algorithms and multiprocessing boards, readily available for the new SHARC family, will simplify system design and help customers get to market quickly.
About the ADSP-21160
The ADSP-21160 is the first DSP in the new ADSP-21100 SHARC family.
Operating at 100 MHz, it is optimized for multiprocessing applications
and integrates 4 Mbits of on-chip SRAM (dual-ported & dual-banked) and
14 channels of zero-overhead DMA. In addition, I/O includes six 8-bit
wide-link ports; two TDM serial ports for T1/E1 telecommunications line interfaces; and a 64-bit wide external port and cluster multiprocessing support. These features eliminate additional hardware that competitors' microprocessors require.
About ADI SHARC DSPs
Analog Devices' SHARC DSPs set a new standard of performance and
integration for demanding signal processing applications such as
imaging, speech recognition, high-end audio, wireless communications and radar/sonar. SHARC DSPs simplify real-time systems development by
emphasizing sustained performance. ADI achieves this by balancing
computational core performance, large internal dual-ported SRAM, and I/O throughput. Analog Devices currently offers more than 30
code-compatible, 32-bit SHARC DSPs that execute both fixed- and
floating-point math operations.
About Analog Devices
With fiscal 1997 sales of $1.24 billion, Analog Devices (NYSE: ADI) is a leading manufacturer of precision high-performance integrated circuits used in analog and digital signal processing applications. Headquartered in Norwood, Massachusetts, the company employs approximately 7,800 people worldwide, and has manufacturing facilities in Massachusetts, California, North Carolina, Ireland, the Philippines and Taiwan.
WHAT THIRD-PARTY DEVELOPERS ARE SAYING ABOUT ANALOG DEVICES' NEW FAMILY
OF 32-BIT SHARC DSPs
SHARC Customers:
"We're excited to see that ADI continues to invest in the high-end,
floating-point segment of the DSP market. The SHARC architecture has
proven very suitable to our needs in digital receiver products, and
we're anxiously awaiting the performance boost offered by the transition to the ADSP-21160 DSP."
-- John Wendler, Development Engineer, System Architect, Hewlett-Packard
Company, Santa Rosa Systems Division
"The new ADSP-21160 demonstrates ADI's continuing customer focus and
support for SHARC-based products. The ADSP-21160, by maintaining code
compatibility, provides us with a higher performance migration path
while using our existing base of ADSP-2106x software applications. The
SIMD core enhancements provide additional performance improvements for
new image-processing requirements."
-- Paul Hyland, Senior Engineer, Picker International
"With its rich instruction set, floating-point format, and on-chip
peripherals, ADI's SHARC DSP has become the digital signal processor of choice for professional audio applications. The new ADSP-21100 SHARC DSP family allows us to increase performance as well as shorten time to market due to its code compatibility and proven architecture."
-- Gert E. Rosenboom, Senior DSP Engineer, Peak Audio
SHARC Third-party Hardware & Software Developers:
"ADI's SHARC DSPs are the de facto standard for multiprocessing
applications. The newest SHARC family member, the ADSP-21160, further
solidifies ADI's position as the standard bearer."
-- Jim Bittman, President, BittWare Research Systems
"ADI's ADSP-2106x SHARC family provides the highest system density
available in terms of MFLOPS, MBYTES/sec and fast on-chip RAM in a
single, low-power package. One can literally use it to build a parallel processing supercomputer on a credit card. With the ADSP-21160, ADI has done it again and created a new reference point in the market."
-- Eric Verhulst, President, Eonic Systems, Inc.
"Analog Devices' latest DSP entrant, the ADSP-21160, enhances its strong position in high-performance floating-point DSP. The ability to use existing code, coupled with glueless multiprocessing features in a
proven architecture, plus extensive third-party support set the stage
for rapid acceptance of the ADSP-21100 family."
-- Peter Siy, President, White Mountain DSP
"With the announcement of the ADSP-21160 SHARC processor, Analog Devices demonstrates its commitment to its customers. Analog Devices provides CASTOR Technologies with the right solution to help us fulfill the increasing demand from our own customers for high throughput and yet-unreached processing power in the massively parallel computing industry."
-- Mr. Xavier Bernard, Chairman and Founder, CASTOR Technologies
"Transtech DSP's product range is built on a cornerstone of scalable,
high-performance and high-density multiprocessing devices such as the
SHARC, which is ideal for our needs. The new ADSP-21160 picks up the
lead established by the ADSP-2106x and promises to extend it even
further. Transtech DSP fully supports and welcomes the announcement of
the ADSP-21100 family."
-- Jeremy Banks, Marketing Manager, Transtech DSP
"ADI's SHARC DSPs are a de facto standard for multiprocessing
applications and an excellent match for 3L's Diamond multiprocessor
RTOS. The newest SHARC family member, the ADSP-21160, furthers ADI's
lead. Its glueless multiprocessing features are especially important. As software developers, we are also pleased that chip-level performance density leadership in MFLOPS/sq. in. and MFLOPS is balanced by the system-level flexibility of the SHARCPAC module specification."
-- Dr. Peter S. Robertson, Managing Director, 3L Limited
"Dramatically improved performance that retains code compatibility is
unprecedented in the DSP floating-point industry. The ADSP-21160 is
clearly the most advanced hard-core DSP chip on the horizon and, coupled with the recent software advances, it will clearly be the solution of choice for high-end applications."
-- Jeff Milrod, President, Ixthos, Inc.
"Thanks to the code compatibility of ADI's latest ADSP-21100 family of
32-bit DSP's, Mango Computers will be able to seamlessly add this
high-performance family to its MATLAB - based software development
system."
-- Michael Berlin, President and CEO, Mango Computers, Ltd.
"Analog Devices' new high-performance, 32-bit, floating-point DSP, the
ADSP-21160, has five times the performance of the current SHARC
processor and is code compatible, allowing our customers a seamless
migration to the new processor."
-- Andrew Talbot, Director, Spectrum Signal Processing
"The market needs simple high-performance multiprocessor building blocks that are easy for hardware designers to build and for software
developers to program. The new ADSP-21160 meets these requirements by
employing a proven architecture with glueless multiprocessing features."
-- Jeremy James, President, Precise Software Technologies
"This new code-compatible family of DSPs demonstrates ADI's commitment
to its customers and a clear understanding of the investment customers
and third-party partners have made in SHARC software development. Blue
Wave System's diverse SHARC customer base will truly benefit from the
ability to reuse exiting SHARC code in future systems. This, we believe, will ultimately result in a faster time to market."
-- Will Abbey, Product Manager, Blue Wave Systems
"With the new ADSP-21100 SHARC DSP family, ADI continues its legacy as
the leader in high-performance signal processing. SHARC is the engine of choice for high-performance signal processing, as the ADSP-21160 at
100MHz executes 1024-pt complex FFT in 90 microseconds and integrates
4Mb memory, up to 200MHz core and 800 Mbytes/sec I/O for sustained
signal processing performance."
-- Joseph Sgro, Chief Executive Officer, Alacron, Inc. |
