This announcement coincides with news today from the RapidIO(R) Trade Association (RTA) recognizing that key players in the DSP, FPGA, switch and embedded processor markets have come together to facilitate a robust sRIO Ecosystem to support sRIO development and drive higher bandwidth interconnect. The RTA, a membership-based organization dedicated to driving the RapidIO interconnect architecture (http://www.RapidIO.org ), has recognized TI's release of the TMS320C6455 Evaluation Module as a significant event in the evolution of Serial RapidIO technology. With TI leading the way in 2005 with sRIO ready C6455 DSPs, key silicon providers TI, Freescale, Xilinx and Tundra are now all sampling devices and conducted a mini Plug Fest on February 17, 2006. sRIO development systems are available so customers can evaluate and prototype sRIO systems prior to committing to a board design. In short, all key system elements are available enabling customers to build sRIO systems.

"2006 is the year that sRIO becomes a reality and TI is leading the way. Industry support for the Serial RapidIO bus is increasing rapidly, and the C6455 EVM and DSK allows customers to start multiprocessing designs with sRIO now," said Danny Petkevich, worldwide C6000 platform marketing manager, Texas Instruments. "With the EVM's AMC connector, customers have great expandability to other sRIO building blocks since they can connect seamlessly to sRIO-enabled FPGAs, switches and embedded processors without needing to build a board."

A Complete Development Platform

The two new tools, the C6455 EVM and the C6455 DSK, provide a complete modular development platform including both hardware and software. The C6455 DSP Evaluation Module allows sRIO development by providing the AdvancedTCA(R) AMC (Advanced Mezzanine Card) connector that connects to a second C6455 DSP on an AMC form factor daughter card, providing a platform for high-end multiprocessor development. Interprocessor communication takes place through the 10Gb/s 4 lane sRIO bus via the industry-standard AMC connector, which also supports connection to third-party sRIO expansion cards. The EVM adds UTOPIA and Gigabit Ethernet MAC interfaces, along with more DDR2 memory. TI offers the award-winning Code Composer Studio(TM) Platinum IDE (Integrated Development Environment), with DSP/BIOS kernel support for sRIO Message Queue API, allowing customers to start development at a higher level of abstraction -- allowing faster time-to-market and easier portability.

C6455 DSP Boosts Performance and Bandwidth

The C6455 DSP provides increased performance, reduced code size, more on- chip memory and high-bandwidth integrated peripherals, including the sRIO bus. Compared with previous C64x(TM) DSP platform implementations, the C6455 DSP can increase performance and I/O bandwidth by two to 12X, depending on system design and application requirements.

"We are pleased with the performance we have achieved with TI's Serial RapidIO DSPs in our AdvancedTCA-based computing platform," said Mark Skalabrin, vice president and general manager of the Advanced Solutions business at Mercury Computer Systems, Inc. "With RapidIO embedded in TI DSPs, we are able to architect a well-balanced solution that more readily supports the bandwidth and processing requirements of our customers."

The widely compatible RapidIO Interconnect Architecture offers high- performance, packet-switched technology that addresses the need for reliability and increased bandwidth in both chip-to-chip and board-to-board communications at speeds to 10 Gbps and beyond. A 1x sRIO link is fast enough to send two channels of HD 1080i raw video between devices, and a 4x link can easily send four channels of HD 1080p raw video between devices with bandwidth to spare. With support for a variety of topologies, the sRIO bus makes it much easier to support multiprocessing and can eliminate the need for aggregation logic.

Availability and Pricing

The TMS320C6455 DSP Evaluation Module and Starter Kit are available now from Texas Instruments and TI authorized distributors. Suggested retail pricing is $495 US per unit for the DSK, and $1795 US for the EVM. The C6455 DSP is shipping today in TMX pre-production with 1 GHz, 850 MHz and 720 MHz speeds starting at $179 for quantities of 10K units. For more information, please visit http://www.ti.com/c6455pr .

About TI

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 .

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