Kit And Tools Target Multimedia Apps And New Processors

Sept. 1, 2006

Priced at $895, Analog Devices' Blackfin Multimedia Starter Kit combines the ADSP-BF561 EZ-Kit Lite with the AV EZExtender and USB-LAN EZ-Extender boards (see the figure). The AV board has analog and digital camera interfaces along with audio

William G. Wong

The software development kit (SDK) includes drivers for video encoders and audio codecs. It also comes with a range of sample applications that work with off-the-shelf devices such as OmniVision camera modules. Source code is provided for most samples and drivers.

The SDK requires VisualDSP++ 4.5. Enhancements include a scriptable flash memory programmer, a connectionless interface allowing reconnection to a debug target, and power estimation analysis. This version of VisualDSP++ also supports the SHARC and TigerSHARC processors in addition to the latest Blackfin processors and the flash-based ADSP-BF538 and ADSP-BF538F.

These 500-MHz devices can hold up to 1 Mbyte of flash and 148 kbytes of RAM. Designed for automotive applications, they include peripherals such as CAN, UARTs, SPI, TWI, and GPIO along with dual DMA controllers. The MMU supports Linux, Green Hills Integrity, and other operating systems. Pricing for the ADSP-BF538F starts at $13.75.
www.analog.com

About the Author

William G. Wong | Senior Content Director - Electronic Design and Microwaves & RF

I am Editor of Electronic Design focusing on embedded, software, and systems. As Senior Content Director, I also manage Microwaves & RF and I work with a great team of editors to provide engineers, programmers, developers and technical managers with interesting and useful articles and videos on a regular basis. Check out our free newsletters to see the latest content.

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I earned a Bachelor of Electrical Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology and a Masters in Computer Science from Rutgers University. I still do a bit of programming using everything from C and C++ to Rust and Ada/SPARK. I do a bit of PHP programming for Drupal websites. I have posted a few Drupal modules.

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