Raising the bar on performance and precision standards for mission critical applications, Texas Instruments (TI) is offering the industry’s highest performing multicore digital signal processors based on its TMS320C66X DSP generation. Suitable for applications such as software defined radios (SDRs), radar, surveillance and imaging cameras, the C66x DSP generation offers developers a variety of multicore solutions and capabilities, combined with an expanded array of IP cores and development software and tools, enabling sophisticated system architectures that are both power- and cost-efficient.
TI’s C66x multicore DSPs will enable developers to meet the requirements of increasing processing power, accuracy and finer resolution in mission critical applications.
Functionality, reliability and ease of use are all vital factors for mission critical developers when designing quality system applications. TI’s C66X multicore DSPs deliver 10-GHz DSP with fixed- and floating-point performance on a single device for increased precision. Additionally, the device increases system capabilities by consolidating the functionality of multiple DSPs onto a single device, saving board space and cost.
TI’s multicore DSPs also address interface bandwidth requirements, such as SRIO, PCIe and Hyperlink. And for those applications required to work under extreme physical conditions, such as scorching temperatures and sustaining system long shelf life, TI’s multicore solutions offer lead solder ball packages at industrial temperatures, making the C66x family highly reliable and useful in mission critical applications.
The device includes the TMS320C6670 radio SoC, a 1.2 GHz four core device, offering improved accelerators for software defined radios (SDRs), public safety and emerging broadband radio systems. The C6670 includes a multistandard Bit Rate Coprocessor (BCP) as well as other coprocessors that accelerate physical layer processing for LTE, WCDMA, TD-SCDMA and WiMAX, substantially increasing system capacity and performance with low latency. In addition, the balanced programmable CPU cores and configurable accelerators enable software defined radios with a simplified programming model. The addition of improved accelerators further helps to develop multistandard communications-centric solutions for the mission critical industry. In addition, TI’s KeyStone multicore architecture allows developers to use the same platform, across TI’s C66x multicore DSPs, for supporting multiple and complex waveforms in SDRs.
Radar systems need faster processing time for Fast-Fourier transform (FFT) and the C66x multicore DSPs are able to provide a path for parallel processing in order to meet the FFT processing time requirements. Radar developers can choose to use all of the cores or some of the cores to meet FFT time repose requirements. Once FFT performance is met within a radar system, developers can use the other C66x DSP cores to perform pre and/or post processing of the signals or other tasks in the system. In addition, TI’s software tools provide full multicore entitlement to determine the best core configuration, allowing developers more flexibility to meet multiple requirements of radar systems.
With the growth in cloud computing there is a move for more centralised networks in surveillance applications, as well as a growing demand for advanced video analytics algorithms to assist in managing the increasing number of camera inputs. All of these demands require a significant amount of processing capabilities. The C66x DSPs are able to offer mission critical developers a large collection of algorithms from industry leading third parties and partners, as well as the ability to easily develop their own algorithms with TI’s Vision Library. TI’s Vision Library includes over 40 common kernels which serve as the essential building blocks of most video analytic algorithms. In addition, TI offers developers advanced codecs, including JPEG 2000, for the best possible image quality, low latency and no inter-frame dependencies which are necessary for many government regulated applications.
