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Behind the scenes: Dolby’s acquisition of Coding Technologies By BDTI, 12/19/2007 Dolby, based in San Francisco, CA, has acquired audio compression specialist Coding Technologies. Dolby is well-known for its AC-3 audio compression algorithm (also known as Dolby Digital), used worldwide in cinema sound and more recently accepted for audio for digital television in North America. Coding Technologies focuses on audio compression for mobile, digital broadcasting and Internet markets worldwide. (More)

Microchip Switches to MIPS Core for PIC32 By BDTI, 12/19/2007 Last month, Microchip announced a new 32-bit microcontroller chip family, the PIC32. With this family, Microchip—a long-time player in 8-and 16-bit microcontrollers—is going after the 32-bit microcontroller market, and making a big change in architecture. Unlike Microchip’s earlier chips, which were based on the company’s proprietary processor architecture, the new family is based on the MIPS M4K core. (More)

Jeff Bier's Impulse Response—Embedded Processor Wars By Jeff Bier, 12/19/2007 For a while there, it seemed as though DSP processors and general-purpose processors (GPPs) were morphing into one another. In an effort to provide better DSP performance, general-purpose processors (GPPs) were incorporating increasingly powerful DSP-oriented features. (More)

Case Study—BDTI Benchmarks Help Vendors Win New Customers By BDTI, 12/19/2007 Smaller fabless chip vendors face an uphill battle: to beat out larger rivals, they must attract the attention of potential customers, prove the advantages of their products, and demonstrate that they will be reliable, long-term partners.  One such company recently used BDTI Benchmarks to accomplish all three of these objectives. (More)

Evaluating the DSP Capabilities of the Cortex-R4 By BDTI, 12/6/2007 In 2004, ARM announced its newest generation of licensable cores, called the “Cortex” family.  Cortex cores span a wide range of performance levels, with Cortex M-series cores at the low end, Cortex R-series cores providing mid-range performance, and the Cortex A-series applications processors offering the highest performance.  The first Cortex core to be announced was the Cortex-M3, and since then ARM has announced several others, including the Cortex-A8 and A9, the Cortex-M1, and the Cortex-R4. (More)