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Technology Stocks : ADI: The SHARCs are circling! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: BostonView who wrote (1659)	4/25/2000 7:43:00 AM
From: Jim Oravetz	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 2882

Not sure what kind of feedback you are looking for. This new part sounds very interesting - for the right application. Digital Signal Processing functions - filtering, convolution, discrete fourier transforms etc. have moved from software/firmware controlled DSP chips to "dedicated hardware" implementations only with the advent of larger configurable field programmable gate array (FPGA) devices. This was more the result of FPGA vendors - Xilinx, Altera, Atmel - looking for more markets to sell into. For most functions, dedicated hardware can outperform a DSP chip/software implementation. FPGA's, in general, can be configured to perform any digital logic function- counters, adders, multiplexing. This device seems to got beyond the "general" nature of FPGA's and is specifically targeted to doing math functions - multiply-accumulate(MAC). Math functions are what DSP is all about. As far as ADI and other DSP chip vendors, this may take away some business. There are however, many DSP chip implementations were the DSP does some very general purpose functions, just like a cheap microcontroller. Jim

To: BostonView who wrote (1659)	4/25/2000 10:21:00 PM
From: Dave Chanoux	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 2882

I don't claim to be a techy, but my company uses the AD7712 converter which is similar to the AD7723 referenced in the article (more precision but slower). Here is a conclusion I would draw: any converter requires surrounding circuitry to take out the undesirable effects of the conversion; ie, anit-aliasing filters to remove the effects of the sampling frequencies, post conversion digital filters to remove digital effects. This new thing may let designers build converter based circuits and products with fewer chips, combining the converter with the filters provided by this new thing. This might be considered a parallel with the modem on a chip which ADI brought out a year or so ago, reducing the standard modem from 7 chips to 1. I'm not sure this new thing will have that big an effect or that anyone will adopt it. Hope this helps. Someday let me tell you the story of my new modem, a continuing tale of hardware integration which mimics the Microsoft software strategy and mocks the justice department. But that's going off-topic. Regards, Dave Chanoux