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Technology Stocks : Spectrum Signal Processing (SSPI) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Larry Brew who wrote (511)	1/20/1998 11:58:00 PM
From: pat mudge	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 4400

[TI and SSPIF] Larry -- Many of Spectrum's products are being designed for TI's C6X and in conversation with their CEO Barry Jinks, I was told the relationship between the two companies could become closer in the coming months. Whether through partnership or equity position I couldn't say. I do know they hired Ron Wages away from TI and I'm told it was because of the close ties between the two companies. One of the C6X products I find especially intriguing is their V.34+ which will allow multiple modems on a board, thus saving valuable real estate in telco COs. Now, as for launch dates for the C6X, I think production numbers will come mid year, but I think there should be some limited release before then. I learned today that TI will be hosting an ADSL forum in Santa Fe, NM, next week and I believe all their DSL partners will be attending. I'll try to find out if the press is invited. The C67X is further out, I believe, and perhaps for reasons you mention: the .18 chips being in limited production. Here's a speech by Wages given while still at TXN: <<< DSP development pulled under one roof By Ron Wages -DSP Marketing Manager and Reid Tatge -Senior Member -Technical Staff -Texas Instruments -Semiconductor Group -Houston It is becoming increasingly common for DSP programmers to use high-level languages (HLLs) such as C and C++ instead of programming at the assembly-language level. The primary reason for this trend is that as DSP applications get larger and more complex, programmers need the power of HLLs to maintain or even increase software-development productivity. (Another factor is that there are simply far more C and C++ programmers than assembly experts available.) To simultaneously meet application performance requirements and unyielding time-to-market pressures, new-product developers are placing compilers and code-optimization tools at the top of their criteria list in choosing a DSP. The compiler and the DSP together must be considered as a finely tuned system which can make a dramatic difference in the eventual performance of a DSP-based product, regardless of the stated Mips or Mflops rating of the processor itself. Third-party development tools have always been abundant for microprocessors and DSPs, but the solution which produces the best application results is concurrent DSP and compiler development by a single vendor. With compiler designers sitting on the same team as processor designers, a unified, production-quality development system can be developed and perfected well before a processor design actually goes to silicon. Architectural optimizations that benefit compilers can be worked through during the processor design phase, using actual statistics rather than guesses, and next-generation architectures can be evaluated by compiling real customer applications. When a new DSP finally goes to silicon, all the pieces are in place for an optimized compiler/processor system that is immediately ready for rapid product development. Tartan target It was with this ideal in mind that Texas Instruments acquired Tartan Inc., which was started by code-optimization experts from Carnegie Mellon University and is the industry's leading third-party developer of DSP compilers and back-end code-optimization tools. Tartan's compilers extract the maximum performance possible from a digital-signal processor. Tartan also brings new expertise to TI in C++ and Ada95. With the Tartan acquisition, TI has now established the largest DSP software-development tools group in the world. The fundamental goal for a C/C++ DSP compiler is to decrease development by making DSPs easier to program and DSP application software easier to reuse. HLL programming lets programmers focus on their applications by effectively hiding the architectural details of a DSP. DSP programmer productivity is improved because it is easier to express mathematical algorithms without having to worry about exactly how algorithm execution maps onto a processor architecture. C code is understood by more programmers than assembly language code, and is therefore more readily shared and reused among programmers. Also, familiar C and C++ syntax is highly structured, making debugging more intuitive, and lowering long-term code-maintenance costs by making software easier to read, verify, and modify. C and C++ code can be recompiled across different DSPs and across multiple generations of a DSP family. This protects software investment by making code reusable, and independent of processor choice. For this reason, application performance of existing HLL code can undergo dramatic gains, as concurrent compiler/DSP development produces the most efficient DSP object code possible. The ability of a DSP vendor to provide such system-level optimization advances can be crucial to DSP application success. The unique processor features that make DSPs so fast also make them the last bastion of assembly-language programming. So only high-level language compilers that are intimately familiar with the nuances of DSP features can adequately meet the goal of replacing assembly in DSP software. A DSP compiler must be able to take full advantage of DSP-specific instructions like circular addressing, bit-reversed addressing, single-cycle multiply-accumulate, fixed-point arithmetic support, and so on. The Tartan compilers, for example, support TI's TMS320 DSP's circular-addressing and bit-reversed-addressing features, and handle interrupts.>>> I'll scout out some more information from TXN's website and post a little later. Spectrum is one of the finest DSP development companies you'll find anywhere. Check their website for partnerships and mergers. spectrumsignal.com I'll be back. :) Pat