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| Case Study: Making Compilers Smarter |
By Jennifer White & Jeff Bier, 5/28/2008
Fifteen years ago DSP engineers expected to write and optimize most of their software in assembly language, and they did it on DSP processors with obscure and highly specialized instruction sets. Back then, compilers for DSP processors were inefficient and couldn’t use many of the processors’ specialized performance-improving features. If you wanted to use bit-reversed addressing or circular buffers or fill delay slots, for example, you’d have to write that code yourself.
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| Jeff Bier's Impulse Response—“DSP” becomes ubiquitous, passé |
By Jeff Bier, 5/28/2008
When my partners and I founded BDTI back in the early 90’s, “DSP” was in the process of becoming both a hot technology and a widely used abbreviation. The abbreviation meant two distinct things: digital signal processing, and digital signal processor. You could usually figure out which one was meant by the context, but in some ways they were interchangeable—if you were doing digital signal processing, you were probably doing it on a digital signal processor.
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| 3DLabs Aims Massively Parallel Chips at Portable Multimedia |
By Jennifer White & Jeff Bier, 4/23/2008
 When people talk about massively parallel, multicore chips, they’re usually talking about chips for high-performance line-powered applications, like WiMAX base stations or desktop video processing. But 3DLabs is headed in a different direction. The fabless chip company offers a massively parallel media processor, the DMS-02, which the company says is a perfect fit for portable multimedia devices with demanding video and audio processing requirements—such as high-end cellular handsets and portable media players. According to 3DLabs, the chip is in full production and costs $40 in small (1K) quantities. The company is currently shipping chips to initial customers, including a video surveillance equipment vendor, Grandeye.
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| IBM’s Cell for Embedded? |
By Jennifer White & Jeff Bier, 4/23/2008
 IBM’s multicore Cell processor has garnered a lot of media attention over the last couple of years, as the multicore approach itself has become something of a juggernaut. BDTI recently investigated the current state of Cell products, and whether the architecture is likely to get significant traction in embedded applications.
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| Case Study: Where Does Your Processing Engine Fit In? |
By Jennifer White & Jeff Bier, 4/23/2008
Developing a new signal processing engine is expensive and risky, particularly for a small start-up or for an established company moving into an unfamiliar market. There are good reasons to take that risk: signal processing has become ubiquitous in a wide range of application areas, and offers the potential for high revenues. The flip side is that the market is already densely populated with all kinds of signal processing engines: single-core chips, multi-core chips, massively parallel processors, DSP-enhanced FPGAs, SoCs, etc. Depending on the specific target market, a new processor may find itself going head-to-head with some or all of these classes of competitor.
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| Jeff Bier's Impulse Response—Corporate Bureaucracy Blocks Innovation |
By Jeff Bier, 4/23/2008
As the president of a small company that frequently works with big companies, I am often frustrated by how long it takes to get from a handshake agreement to a signed contract. The process can be absurdly slow and painful, and that’s bad for business on both sides.
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| Hantro 8190 Will Bring YouTube to Cell Phones |
By Jennifer White & Jeff Bier, 3/19/2008
 A few months ago, video codec vendor On2 announced its acquisition of Hantro, a company that offers licensable video codec accelerators and software. At the Mobile World Congress in February, On2 unveiled the first offspring from the marriage—the Hantro 8190 licensable silicon IP core.
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| Case Study: Shoehorning Maximum Signal Processing into Minimal Processors |
By Jennifer White & Jeff Bier, 3/19/2008
Digital signal processing (DSP) algorithms are increasingly important in embedded systems. For example, compute-intensive multimedia functions are finding their way into applications ranging from toys to appliances to telephones. But in many of these systems, cost constraints dictate a processor with very minimal horsepower and limited—or no—signal-processing-specific features.
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| Jeff Bier's Impulse Response—¿Hola? ¿Hola? I Can’t Hear You Now. |
By Jeff Bier, 3/19/2008
I spent some time at the Mobile World Congress in Spain last month, where pretty much everyone involved in wireless technologies showed up. I am happy to report that there were some very cool new technologies demonstrated there, like Texas Instruments’ miniature video projector that may one day be incorporated into cell phones.
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