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

To: Jim Oravetz who wrote (2819)	7/23/2003 11:06:35 AM
From: Jim Oravetz	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 2882

600-MHz TigerSharc packs IBM DRAM By Patrick Mannion , EE Times June 23, 2003 URL: eetimes.com Manhasset, N.Y. - With the help of IBM Microelectronics, Analog Devices Inc. has embedded 24 Mbits of DRAM onto its latest TigerSharc DSP. Unveiled at last week's Embedded Processor Forum, the TigerSharc also features a repipelined core and a revamped I/O structure that emphasizes fast clocking, multiprocessing and I/O throughput. "The new lineup shows how TigerSharc is the only [DSP] that can do a true all-software-defined baseband in 3G," said Kevin Leary, product line director for ADI (Norwood, Mass.). "And we do it in an instruction-set architecture machine, not just with an accelerator hanging off the side." The company's previous TS101s TigerSharc topped out at 300 MHz, included 6 Mbits of six-transistor SRAM and used half-duplex low-voltage TTL signaling. The new TS201s tops out at 600 MHz, has 24 Mbits of IBM's zero-leakage embedded DRAM and uses full-duplex low-voltage differential signaling on the LinkPort I/O interface. The 600-MHz clock rate was achieved by adding four pipeline stages, bringing the total to 12. ADI's approach is a breath of fresh air, said Jeff Bier of Berkeley Design Technology Inc. "While there has tended to be a lot of focus on cranking up the speed and parallelism of the core," Bier said, "memory and I/O have been the ugly stepchildren that get left behind." As a result, they have tended to become the bottleneck, he said. "This is a real problem and has been given short shrift in new processors over the last several years. The [ADI] combination of faster core, more memory and I/O is very encouraging." The revamped TigerSharc looks to give Texas Instruments Inc. a "run for its money" in many markets, said Bier. "It seemed for a while there that TI was pulling ahead of the pack, and in many respects it has. Now I get the feeling ADI is getting more competitive with its catalog DSPs than it has been for a while." eet.com