Texas Instruments latest TMS320C66x digital signal processor is the company’s fastest fixed-and floating-point single core device.
The TMS320C6671 DSP is a 1.25GHz single core processor but which has been designed to provide a development path to multicore devices.
The chip offers “multicore-like” features with its peripherals and memory per core, and fixed-and floating-point performance on a single device.
The intention, said TI, is that “developers can test out whether or not multicore devices suit their needs and explore options for migrating their designs to other processors in TI’s C66x DSP portfolio if more performance is needed down the road”.
“For developers of high-performance applications wanting a feel for multicore performance but who are used to designing with single core devices, our C6671 DSP offers a true ‘stepping stone’ into multicore,” said Ramesh Kumar, business manager, multicore and media infrastructure, Texas Instruments.
There is pin and software compatibility with TMS320C6672, TMS320C6674 and TMS320C6678 multicore DSPs
TI has also enhanced its C6670 radio SoC. The 1.2 GHz four core device now has improved accelerators for communications applications including software defined radios (SDRs), public safety and emerging broadband radio systems.
Enhancements to the C6670 radio SoC include a new multistandard Bit Rate Coprocessor (BCP) as well as other coprocessors that accelerate physical layer processing for LTE, WCDMA, TD-SCDMA and WiMAX.
TI has updated its multicore software and tools, including a free multicore software development kit (MCSDK), Linux software, optimized libraries and support for the OpenMP programming model.
TI offers easy-to-use, low cost evaluation modules (EVMs) to help developers quickly get started with designs using the C6670, C6671, C6672, C6674, or C6678 DSPs.
The TMDXEVM6670L and TMDXEVM6678L sell for $399 each and include a free MCSDK, Code Composer Studio (CCS) integrated development environment (IDE) and suite of application/demo codes to allow programmers to quickly come up to speed on the new platform.
