Earlier ’C64x family members were fabbed in a 130 nm process and executed with a top speed of 720 MHz. TI states that the migration to the new process has enabled it to cut the price of 720 MHz ’C64x chips in half, down to $115 in 10K quantities.

The 1 GHz speed has been a long time in coming. Back in February of 2000, TI issued a press release heralding the ’C64x architecture as having “10x the performance of [then] current DSPs” while “operating at speeds of up to 1.1 GHz.” Four years later, the promised speed has finally arrived—give or take 100 MHz. Even with the long gestation period, however, the 1 GHz ’C64x easily retains the title of fastest mainstream DSP.

This speed increase has propelled the ’C64x ahead of a key competitor, Analog Devices’ TigerSHARC. About six months ago, ADI began sampling a 600 MHz version of the TigerSHARC architecture (see July 2003 BDTI's DSP Insider). TigerSHARC is a competitor with some strong advantages—current chips have much more on-chip memory than the ’C64x, and the architecture supports an unusually wide range of data types. At 600 MHz, TigerSHARC is almost as fast as the ’C64x at 720 MHz. With the new 1 GHz chips, though, the ’C64x gains a significant speed advantage. Its BDTIMark2000™ score is 9130, compared to TigerSHARC’s score of 6150. (The TigerSHARC score is based on 16-bit fixed-point benchmarks.) Of the processors BDTI has benchmarked, only the Intrinsity FastMATH has a higher score: 11,890 at 2 GHz. See http://www.BDTI.com. for additional BDTImark2000 scores.