Telecomm DSP Can Process 8/16/32-Bit & Floating-Point Data

The firm's TigerSHARC architecture has been tapped to create the first of a new breed of digital signal processors (DSPs) capable of processing on-chip 8-, 16- and 32-bit and floating-point data at high speeds. Each data category is said to be critical to next generation telecomm protocols currently under development, including IMT-2000 (i.e., 3G wireless) and xDSL. For example, 8-bit data processing is well-suited for handling Viterbi channel decoder algorithms, as well as image processing; 16-bit data types are of importance to telecomm infrastructure and voice and channel coders; and 32-bit and floating-point data processing are useful in attacking signal quality problems.
In addition to fixed- and floating-point cores, the new ADSP-TS001 TigerSHARC DSP integrates on-chip 6 Mb of SRAM, four bi-directional link ports, a 64-bit external port, 14 DMA channels, and 128 registers. And it offers high-bandwidth internal memory access, with the equivalent of more than 900,000 simultaneous phone calls moved in just one second. The DSP comes in 360-pin SBGAs, costs $150 each/10K, and is sampling now, with production scheduled for the second half of 2000.