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

To: Jim Oravetz who wrote (2786)	1/11/2002 7:48:28 AM
From: Jim Oravetz	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 2882

ADI's New Blackfin™ DSP—Sailing Above the Chop by Dr. Barry Henderson Well what have we here? Is this simply another hyped up number cruncher, or is it a serious architectural trend setter? Is it a DSP…is it a microcontroller?…or is it a mixed-up silicon schizoid transient trying to satisfy every conceivable market all at once? These glitzy hybrid designs often fail on all counts, and are quickly forgotten (except for the poor souls lumbered with programming them, trying to squeeze out every last cycle to obtain even meager performance!). Well, I honestly perceive that the label of serious trend setter is a more appropriate label to attach to the Blackfin™ DSP family recently introduced by Analog Devices, and I will be writing a short series of articles describing and analyzing their performance and application area. This first article provides an introduction and overview of the Blackfin™ DSP family, focusing on the first device offered by ADI, the ADSP-21535. ...snip... Conclusion The new Blackfin™ DSPmC (Digital Signal Processor with mController Capability) family from ADI promises to be a competitive, interesting, and very welcome addition into the arena of high-performance multimedia computing. It has many features that point to it being a winner: a well-thought-out roadmap, very high performance DSP coupled to low power features, the mathematical aptitude to handle complex tasks at high speed, lots of on-chip communications resources, many of the control functions offered by a microcontroller, and enough memory to eliminate most forms of paralysis and amnesia, which often afflict fast processors with limited RAM. Coupled with excellent tools such as VisualDSP++ and a decent RTOS, the Blackfin™ should prove popular with developers. The next article will delve further into the low power claims and the instruction-set architecture of this new processor family. (my require registering to see the whole thing). chipcenter.com Once again, I have heard from a design engr who had nothing good to say about ADI. Apparently, his company was very unhappy with ADI's parts delivery during last yr's parts cruch. ADI was not able or unwilling to communicate status on orders. Very big black eye for ADI and the guy stated that ADI is on the "avoid list" for new design work. Jim

To: Jim Oravetz who wrote (2786)	2/6/2002 6:59:30 PM
From: Tom Caruthers	Respond to of 2882

Now shipping...How's that for a leg up on the competition! biz.yahoo.com Monday February 4, 6:48 pm Eastern Time Press Release SOURCE: Analog Devices, Inc. Analog Devices Delivers Industry's Highest Performance Floating-Point DSP Operating at 250 MHZ -ISSCC paper discloses advancements in TigerSHARC DSP's architecture. NORWOOD, Mass., Feb. 4 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Analog Devices, Inc. (NYSE: ADI - news), a global leader in high-performance semiconductors for signal processing applications, today announced its ADSP- TS101S TigerSHARC® digital signal processor (DSP) is now shipping to customers at an industry-leading 250 megahertz (MHz). The device, which is implemented in a world class 0.13 micron process with 8 layers of copper interconnect, is targeted at numerous signal processing applications that rely on multiple processors working together to execute computationally-intensive functions. TigerSHARC DSPs will be used in applications such as defense, medical, communications, video and industrial systems, including the burgeoning 3G cellular base station market. Additionally, representatives from Analog Devices delivered a paper at the International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC) 2002, at the San Francisco Moscone Center, entitled, ``A 6GOPS General-Purpose DSP with an Enhanced Instruction Set for Wireless Communications.'' The paper disclosed architectural features and communication-optimized instructions that enable a flexible, software-based transceiver approach for communications applications. ``With this announcement, Analog Devices becomes the first manufacturer to offer a 250 MHz general purpose, floating-point DSP,'' said Brian McAloon, group vice president and general manager, DSP and System Products, Analog Devices, Inc. ``We have achieved another milestone on the path toward establishing the TigerSHARC architecture as the performance leader in both 32- bit floating-point, and soon, 16-bit fixed-point.'' At a 250MHz clock rate, the ADSP-TS101S offers a DSP industry-best 1500 MFLOPS peak performance and a floating point, 1024-point complex FFT time of 39 micro-seconds. Moreover, ADI's high-performance TigerSHARC DSP has native support for multiple data types and processes two billion 16-bit multiply and accumulates per second (MACS) at 250 MHz. At these performance levels, TigerSHARC has a typical power dissipation of 1.5 watts, making it optimal for multiprocessing applications where heat dissipation is a concern. The performance-enhanced TigerSHARC DSP offers a complete set of on chip features including a large six Mbit internal memory, 14-channel zero-overhead DMA engine, 1.8 Gbyte I/O throughput and two types of integrated multiprocessing support. Cluster multiprocessing allows for eight TigerSHARC DSPs, a host, and a global memory to connect without any addition logic. The link ports provide for a high bandwidth point-to-point multiprocessing connection that is complementary to the cluster multiprocessing. These two forms of multiprocessing support coupled with the DSP's floating-point performance, zero overhead DMA engine, and large internal memory provide the keys to designing a power-, cost-, and size-optimized multiprocessing system. A complete set of TigerSHARC documentation, along with VisualDSP® integrated development tools, is available today enabling all aspects of DSP hardware and software development. Pricing and Availability The TigerSHARC DSP is currently available and priced at $196 per unit in 10,000 unit quantities and can be ordered under the part number ADSP- TS101SKB2250X.