Texas Instruments Announces Volume Production of World's First 90nm DSPs Running at 1 GHz
1 GHz DSPs Used in Numerous Customer Designs, Opens New Markets
HOUSTON, Nov. 8 /PRNewswire/ -- Texas Instruments Incorporated (NYSE: TXN) (TI) once again raises the standard for high performance as the first company to reach volume production with 1 GHz digital signal processors (DSPs) and the first DSPs manufactured on a 90 nanometer (nm) process technology. Already shipping to more than 70 customers, the 90 nm versions of the TMS320C6414T, TMS320C6415T and TMS320C6416T DSPs offer not only high performance but also lower cost. By also migrating the 720 MHz versions of these three devices to TI's advanced, 90nm CMOS process, the company has achieved a 50 percent price reduction for customers versus the 130nm 720 MHz devices. TI is also announcing a new 1 GHz DSP Starter Kit (DSK) and EEMBC benchmarks that certify the DSPs as the industry's highest ranking performance leader. For more information, please see: http://www.ti.com/1ghzproductionpr .
"TI is experiencing a lot of demand for these 90nm devices to enable higher channel density in communications infrastructure, a market that has been traditionally very strong for the TMS320C64x(TM) generation of DSPs as well as the exploding market of video infrastructure," said Gene Frantz, principal fellow, TI. "Innovative applications such as self-navigating, autonomous vehicles, complex vision systems that can make decisions and high- quality medical imaging without compromise become not only possible but cost- effective to manufacture. We look forward to the innovation that TI's technology enables for our customers and their future end products."
1 GHz DSPs Lead in Industry and Application Benchmarks
Moving to TI's advanced 90nm CMOS process technology and 1 GHz speeds gives customers access to performance and power improvements such as processing up to eight channels of MPEG-2 video transrating, and according to Avi Fisher, CTO at Surf Communications, 64 universal and up to 128 simple voice ports in telecom infrastructure applications on a single device. Achieving these performance levels in a single chip can allow developers to avoid complexities of multi-processor designs. The C64x(TM) DSP generation is also well-suited for packet telephony applications that include data and video. Benchmarked independently, the 1 GHz TMS320C64x DSP achieved an assembly optimized Embedded Microprocessor Benchmark Consortium (EEMBC) Telecom benchmark score of 873.1, the highest score ever achieved by any DSP. The Out-of-Box and Optimized C scores were also industry best, confirming TI's C compiler leadership.
"TI continues their EEMBC score leadership trend with its blazing fast 1 GHz TMS320C641xT DSPs, the highest performing general-purpose DSPs ever benchmarked by the consortium," said Markus Levy, president, EEMBC.
Building around a DSP core that can execute four parallel 16-bit MAC units (eight 8-bit MAC units for video applications), the C641xT DSPs offer one Megabyte (MB) of on-chip high-speed memory and high-speed peripherals that accelerate processing of real-time data. The devices include a 64-channel enhanced direct memory access (EDMA) controller delivering input/output efficiency that manages data transfer from system memory at gigabytes per second, three multi-channel buffered serial ports (McBSPs) each supporting 128 time-division multiplex (TDM) channels as well as AC97 and IIS audio interfaces, and on-board Viterbi and Turbo coprocessors on the C6416T to further improve the channel capacity of communications infrastructure systems.
Leveraging TI's Technology and Manufacturing Strengths
TI's advanced 90nm CMOS process drives cost-effective, DSP solutions with high levels of performance and power savings demonstrating its ability to pack over 65 million transistors on this high performance DSP. The 90nm process can support transistors as small as 37nm and deliver up to a 50 percent improvement in transistor performance over its fastest 130nm transistor.
The new 1GHz DSPs are manufactured today on 200mm, copper wafers; however TI recently qualified 90nm process in its DMOS6 advanced 300mm manufacturing facility to provide additional manufacturing capacity and cost advantages. TI's achievements are a result of the company maintaining its own technology roadmap and manufacturing, and close collaboration with product design and development teams, to deliver cost-effective, differentiated products with fast time to market.
Tuning the Performance of Your DSP Code
Committed to enabling engineers to push designs to their utmost limits, TI offers the industry's most comprehensive development platform, from the Code Composer Studio (TM) (CCStudio(TM)) Integrated Development Environment to the industry's best optimizing compiler. CCStudio's newest Tuning Edition tools proactively review program code, track potential areas for improvement and offer suggestions to help programmers optimize system performance and memory usage. These powerful, yet easy-to-use features speed development time and help programmers unleash the full potential of TI's TMS320C6000(TM) DSP platform devices.
To get application developers started designing immediately, TI offers the new 1GHz C6416T DSP Starter Kit (DSK), complete with off-the-shelf application algorithms, tutorials, reference framework support, CCStudio and the DSP/BIOS(TM) real-time kernel.
Pricing and Availability
The C641xT devices are shipping now in volume quantities in a variety of configurations, with 1 GHz, 720 MHz and 600 MHz versions. Pricing starts at $189 for the 1 GHz C6414T with 1 MB of on-chip memory in 10,000 unit production quantities. The 720 MHz versions of these devices will also be available with up to a 50 percent price reduction versus previous 130nm versions, including the 90 nm 720 MHz C6415T with 1 MB of on-chip memory starting at $99.97 in 10,000 unit production quantities. The 1 GHz C6416T DSP Starter Kit (DSK) is $495.
Detailed benchmark scores on the TMS320C6416T are available at http://www.ti.com/ebenchmarks and http://www.eembc.org/ .
Product Reviews for the 1 GHz TMS320C641xT DSPs
"The next generation of TI's 1GHz DSPs will enable us to keep step with the upcoming demands for high-quality and high-performance image processing in the interventional environment by taking advantage of its broad flexibility and functionality."
Dr.-Ing. Benno Heigl, director of image acquisition development, Siemens Medical Solutions
"The new generation of C64x DSPs enables NMS Communications to transition our technology offerings to full multimedia, both audio and video in one platform. With the availability of the 1GHz DSP part, we can now upgrade the performance of our products with little or no engineering effort. Next- generation applications and network services require intense packet processing, which TI makes possible by providing such high performance devices."
Brough Turner, SVP of technology, NMS Communications
http://www.nmscommunications.com/
"TI DSPs have given us the state of the art competitive price and performance advantages we need to continue our leadership in the media server market. The combination of superior TI technology and excellent TI support led us to choose the TMS320C6415 DSP in our newest system design. The 1 GHz C6415 DSP is the real time media processing element within our system whose performance allows us increased parallelism, three times more active channels and faster and more complex transcoding."
Mike Keefe, vice president of engineering, Cognitronics
http://www.cognitronics.com/
"With the 1GHz DSP we can support up to 64 universal and up to 128 simple voice ports. We find the new 1GHz a perfect solution for customers seeking a single-chip solution for high density and multi-purpose applications."
Avi Fisher, CTO, Surf
http://www.surf-com.com/
"Innovative Integration's Quixote board integrates the C6416 1GHz chip with high-speed analog I/O and large FPGA for software defined radio systems. More MIPS, Turbo co-processor and multi-task friendly programming were key decision factors for our tactical radio development platform."
Darryl Price, defense systems engineer, Boeing
http://www.innovative-dsp.com/
"Our real-time broadcast quality High Definition encoders for Windows Media 9 Series and MPEG-4 AVC use 1 GHz 6414T DSPs for core video coding. The TI solution offers us both the processing power required and the ease of implementation to rapidly bring these innovative new products to market."
Tim Sheppard, director of strategic development, Tandberg TV
http://www.tandbergtv.com/
"By implementing our Real Time Imaging (RTI) stereo-vision system with TI's 1 GHz TMS320C64x DSP technology, we were able to take advantage of the real time processing that TI DSPs give us and make it to the top three in the 2004 DARPA Challenge. The RTI system analyzes over 36 billion pixels of information each second, enabling it to see 700 to 800 feet ahead, and makes decisions on vehicle speed and direction, all in real time. The performance of TI's DSPs is bringing the dream of autonomous vehicles closer to reality."
Dave Hall, founder, captain and chief scientist, Team D.A.D.
http://www.digitalautodrive.com/
"Today we have more than 90 Telcos delivering digital TV using our Astria digital TV processing platform. By enhancing our platform with the 1 GHz C6415 DSP, we will be able to bring our customers the very latest in advanced coding algorithms and enhancements such as high-definition TV at a bit rate low enough to be transmitted over DSL networks. The small footprint, high speed and low power consumption of the C6415 DSP made it the clear choice for our implementation of MPEG-4 AVC."
Craig Bender, VP of marketing and corporate development, Tut Systems
http://www.tutsys.com/
"TI's new 1 GHz C6414 DSP will enable ZONARE's Next Generation Portable Ultrasound product to further deliver on the potentials of Zone Sonography Technology in providing clinicians with extreme levels of diagnostic confidence!"
Glen Mc Laughlin, CTO, ZONARE
http://www.zonare.com/
"We routinely meet and exceed the demands of our customers for carrier- class video headend equipment; they value SkyStream's higher stream density per chassis. The high processing speed of the TI chip is a key factor in enabling us to process a higher number of streams and implement our superior compression algorithm using very few chips."
Francois Modarresse, director of product management, SkyStream Networks
http://www.skystream.com/
Texas Instruments Incorporated provides innovative DSP and analog technologies to meet our customers' real-world signal processing requirements. In addition to Semiconductors, the company's businesses include Sensors & Controls, and Educational & Productivity Solutions. TI is headquartered in Dallas, Texas, and has manufacturing, design or sales operations in more than 25 countries.
Texas Instruments is traded on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol TXN. More information is located on the World Wide Web at http://www.ti.com/ .
EEMBC, the Embedded Microprocessor Benchmark Consortium, as formed in 1997 to develop meaningful performance benchmarks for the hardware and software used in embedded systems. Through the combined efforts of its members, EEMBC benchmarks have become an industry standard for evaluating the capabilities of embedded processors, compilers, and Java implementations according to objective, clearly defined, application-based criteria. More information is located on the World Wide Web at http://www.eembc.org/ .
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CONTACT: Christy Brunton of Texas Instruments Incorporated,
+1-281-274-5805, or cbrunton@ti.com ; or Tim Frost, +1-713-513-9562, or
tfrost@golinharris.com , for Texas Instruments Incorporated. Please do not
publish these numbers or email addresses.
Web site: http://www.ti.com/
http://www.ti.com/1ghzproductionpr
http://www.ti.com/ebenchmarks
http://www.eembc.org/
http://www.nmscommunications.com/
http://www.cognitronics.com/
http://www.surf-com.com/
http://www.innovative-dsp.com/
http://www.tandbergtv.com/
http://www.digitalautodrive.com/
http://www.tutsys.com/
http://www.zonare.com/
http://www.skystream.com/
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