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

To: Jim Oravetz who wrote (1216)	2/8/1999 6:10:00 AM
From: nord	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 2882

fwdconcepts.com www.spectrumsignal.com/index.html threel.co.uk The dsp core [chip] is a different animal than the traditional chips of pc makers. The dsp performs different functions. The dsp cores are designed with certain applications in mind. the can contain various power porting platform configutration but the primary funtion of dsp is to convert the language of analog numbers speed altitutde etc and convert them into the language of computers digital. The traditional dsp market was for MAC military sonar radar surveillance etc. With the advent of highly integrated multiprocessor dsp boards and the rapid evolution of dsp cores driven by technological advances by TI and ADI the on board power speed and functionality of these dsp cores has come down. The next major step that has taken place is that the dsp core companies along with the board level solutions companies have developed suites of boards with different numbers of dsp on each board. Thisa allows for COTS customized off the shlf boards with standard platform to be rapidly deployed by a large number of oem for a variety of functions at a fraction of the cost of old dsps. The net effect of the evolution in dsp is that they now offer very effective cost reducing real time operating systems for motor contol and a host of integrated of smart technologies smart cars[collision avoidance]/ smart basestations 3G smart house factories etc. Where the real world (analog) can be converted to digital and be modulated by on chip program and produce a signal that than causes some action to occur in the real world. ie digital photolabs traffic contol factor contolled by pico basestations. Allow the stretch but the dsp chip is like the cpu. the dsp chip can be put into a series of functions a board that acts much like a computer but instead of strictly computing it also serves through algorithm to convert the analog/to digital and back. ie the Cots are the equivelent of a dsp computer with on board memory programming and functionality. The diffeerence is that the tools necessary for chip software and real time operating system are dsp specific and so require a different orientation than traditional chip makers. DSP Overview DSP technology is revolutionizing the electronics industry and transforming our lives. Essentially, DSP converts and processes continuous analog signals into digital signals which a computer understands. The computer is then able to manipulate these signals in a myriad of ways which were impossible when the signals were in analog form. DSP chips are programmable, to provide a range of functionality and upgradeability over a period of time. Spectrum incorporates these DSP chips into the custom designed boards it develops which means they are software upgradeable to keep pace with the latest technological advances. Digital Signal Processing is simply the processing of real-world signals for the purpose of enhancing, modifying, analyzing or communicating their information content. Typical processing tasks include: €Filtering €Correlation €Spectral Analysis In order to perform it1s task of real-world signal processing, the DSP, like any other, must be incorporated into a system that includes additional hardware resources. As shown in the diagram above (2 and4), Analog-to-Digital Converter (ADC) and Digital-to-Analog Converter(DAC) are often part of a DSP system. Of course, if the input signal is already digital, the ADC and DAC may not be necessary. A Brief History of DSP Practical real-time digital signal processing was initially performed on DEC PDP and VAX machines in the ‘60s. DEC's PDP-11 In the ‘70s, various computing engines used discrete TTL logic chips like AMD1s Am2901 4-bit ALU to accomplish DSP tasks. The first modern DSP chip was developed by NEC in 1980 and was called the µPD7720 . In 1982 Texas Instruments introduced the TMS32010 (The C came later with the advent of CMOS Technology) TI's Speak and Spell - using the the TMS32010 DSP Now TI, ADI, Motorola, AT&T, NEC, and IBM among others sell single chip programmable DSPs that have advanced architectures but that still resemble the early 7720 and 32010 of the ‘80s DSP chips are conceptually similiar to other processors, except that they have been optimized to execute signal processing functions like filtering, correlation and spectral analysis. Many operations, especially those typically used when processing signals, are executed in single instructions. What sets many modern DSP's apart from other processors is that they are specifically designed to be scalable. This is usually achieved by means of high speed ports and shared memory that interfaces gluelessly to other DSPs. Many common DSP algorithms, for example synthetic aperture radar (SAR) processing, lend themselves to being distributed over a number of DSPs, with a corresponding improvement in processing time. In addition, DSP tools and operating systems have evolved to the point that developing code for multiprocessor applications is a trivial extention to just programming a single processor. In certain applications, there are alternatives to using general purpose DSPs. Let's review some of them: €Algorithm Specific DSP's €Fixed function ASIC's €Reprogrammable Hardware (such as FPGA's) €Host Signal Processing €RISC Architectures The Algorithm Specific DSPs and Fixed Function ASICs may be effective as DSP co-processors, but lack versatility for general signal processing. Reprogrammable hardware such as FPGAs is relatively fast, but is relatively difficult to develop with, and development time can beprohibitive when compared to simply coding in C on a general purpose DSP. Host signal processing ( formerly termed "Native signal processing" ) refers to cases where DSP algorithms are actually executed on the host PC, for example the Pentium processor in your PC. This method is growing in popularity, driven by the demand for lower cost in multimedia PC systems. However, PC operating systems (such as Windows 95), and the associated applications require much processing power, and this factor, coupled with the very limited scalability of such systems, make it unlikely that the host processor could ever be used for anything other than low-end DSP applications. RISC Processors are increasingly incorporating DSP-like capabilities, aided by their high clock speed, currently in the 200-400 MHz range. In single processor applications, these devices are comparable to some modern DSP's, but once again, in high-end applications the scalability of the DSP completely surpasses the capabilities offered by RISC's. Once again, it should be remembered that RISC devices have not been optimized for real-time data processing. For example, the hardware includes many non real time features (e.g. the Memory Management Unit ), that add overhead and make code less deterministic. In summary, DSP1s, with their optimized features, allow for deterministic, reconfigurable and easily scalable real time processing and data manipulation. DSP technology is rapidly gaining popularity in the 901s. Regards Norden