Out in Front: March 1, 1996

Label 1996 the "year of the DSP." Motorola and Texas Instruments have both kicked off the year by introducing DSP architectures: Motorola's DSP563xx and DSP568xx and TI's TMS320C2xx and TMS320C54x. EDN's DSP directory (pg 40) details all four of these DSP architectures.

Motorola claims the 24-bit, fixed-point DSP563xx (pg 93) will offer 80 MIPS performance at 80 MHz, eventually reaching 100 MHz. The 16-bit, fixed-point DSP568xx (pg 58), targeted at the low-cost DSP market, delivers 25 MIPS at 50 MHz. To better accommodate applications that range from wireless messaging to ac-motor and servo control, Motorola designers gave the DSP568xx some µC functionality. The architecture can perform bit-field operations, branches, and indexed addressing. Initial support for the DSP568xx comes from Tartan's (Monroeville, PA) C and C++ compiler and Motorola's assembler and linker. Tartan's C development system for PC and SPARC-based systems includes a debugger and sells for $2495. Motorola will also offer the DSP56L811EVM evaluation module. For $2600, Domain Technologies (Plano, TX) sells an emulator for the DSP568xx.

TI's TMS320C2xx (pg 76) represents a significant evolution of the company's popular C2x DSPs. TI is targeting the C2xx devices at high-volume applications. The C2xx is the first affordable fixed-point DSP with on-chip flash memory. For example, the TMS320F206 with 32k words of flash memory, sells for $16.25 (10,000).

Using a 0.25-µm, quad-level metal-process technology, TI plans to hit 100 MIPS performance with the TMS320C54x (pg 83). The 16-bit, fixed-point DSP architecture integrates a Viterbi accelerator. One device in this family, the LC548 also includes 32k words of program or data RAM.
—by Markus Levy

Motorola Inc, Austin, TX. (512) 891-2030.

Texas Instruments Inc, Denver, CO. (800) 477-8924, ext 4500.