EDN’s 20th annual Innovation Awards Finalists
-- EDN, February 18, 2010
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&& PREVIOUS FINALIST | MAIN | NEXT FINALIST >> Category: Multiprocessing Finalist: Wolverine DSP platform, Sound Design Technologies  The 90-nm open platform WOLVERINE device, a multicore device targeting hearing aid devices, combines multiple DSP processors and hardware accelerators, a nonvolatile memory, and several analog functions in less than 11 mm2 area. The chip includes four DSP processors and 11 hardware accelerators, including filtering and FFT functions, interconnected with a patented cross-point architecture. This multicore approach delivers up to 50 MIPs of processing power within a 2-MHz system clock rate and drawing only 1 mA. And by adjusting the on-board programmable clock multiplier to 12 MHz, the processing capability increases to 95 MIPs. In terms of memory, WOLVERINE includes 266 kbits of program memory, 369 kbits of data memory, and 256 kbits of one time programmable (OTP) memory. To round out the digital functionality, the chip includes several interfaces such as GPIOs, I2S, I2C, SPI, and debug. The analog portion of WOLVERINE has been optimized for low power. It includes two audio rate analog-to-digital converters, and one audio digital-to-analog converter optimized for speech processing. A third multichannel low-speed 9-bit analog-to-digital converter is available to monitor such functions and battery voltage, temperature, and analog GPIOs. WOLVERINE also has an integrated voltage regulator for the digital circuitry as a means of reducing the digital power consumption. The analog functions consume less than 300 uA of current. The WOLVERINE platform is packaged in a compact hybrid using Sound Design’s thinSTAX technology. The hybrid includes ten capacitors and one resistor and an optional 1-Mbit EEPROM that can be packaged in a 5.13 x 3.0 x 1.52 mm footprint. |
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