Developing digital media applications can be daunting, which is why Texas Instruments came up with a new digital media development kit. It's equipped with a 600-MHz TMS320DM642 DSP chip on the evaluation board and all the peripheral functions needed to implement a full system solution. The kit also contains a digital media version of the Code Composer Studio integrated development environment and a full suite of application software and utilities
The TMS320DM642, a highly integrated DSP chip, includes three configurable 20-bit video I/O ports, an Ethernet media access controller, and a 32-bit PCI master/slave interface. At 600 MHz, the DM642 can process up to four simultaneous MPEG2 video decodes or a D1 stream with 720- by 480-pixel resolution, either at 30 frames/s. The chip can also perform full main-profile@main-level MPEG2 video encoding in real time.
Besides the evaluation card, other hardware in the kit consists of a digital camera that runs at 30 frames/s and the XDS560 PCI-based emulator, which can bidirectionally stream video data at speeds of up to 2 Mbytes/s. The Code Composer Studio software includes a royalty-free DSP/BIOS real-time kernel and supplies all of the drivers needed for the video interfaces on the evaluation card. Also in the kit are ready-to-use application software modules that developers can just "drop" into their application code.
The digital media development kit lists for $6495 and is available through TI distributors. For users who already own CC Studio, an emulator, and camera, the DM642 evaluation board sells for $1995. To get more information, go to www.ti.com/dmdklaunch.
