Platform simplifies video
By Robert Cravotta -- EDN, December 13, 2005
Texas Instruments’ DM6443 and DM6446 processors are the first two devices in the DaVinci family. These devices integrate a 594-MHz video-optimized TI C64x+ DSP core, a 297-MHz ARM926EJ-S processor core, and a video-processing subsystem in a single device to reduce the BOM (bill-of-materials) costs for video applications by as much as 50%. The C64x+ DSP core is an enhancement of the C64x fixed-point DSP and includes an expanded instruction set. The ARM core incorporates a coprocessor 15 and protection modules. The video-processing subsystem includes a configurable video-processing front-end input for video capture and a configurable video-processing back end output with imaging-coprocessor display support. Other peripherals include a 10/100-Mbps Ethernet MAC (media-access controller) with a management-data I/O module, USB 2.0 PHY (physical)-layer controller, an audio-serial port, an I2C bus interface, three UARTs, three PWMs, an asynchronous external memory interface, and a synchronous-memory interface for DDR2.
The video-processing front end resides only in the DM6446, and it comprises a CCD controller; a preview engine; a histogram module; the H3A autoexposure, white-balance, and focus module; and a resizer. The previewer is a real-time processing engine that converts RGB Bayer-pattern data from a CMOS sensor or CCD to YUV422. The histogram and H3A modules provide statistical information on the raw color data. The resizer can perform separate horizontal and vertical resizings of image data ranging from one-quarter- to four-times scale in increments of 256/n, where N is 64 to 1024.
The video-processing back end resides in both devices and comprises an OSD (on-screen-display) engine and a video encoder. The OSD engine can handle two separate video windows and two separate OSD windows. The video encoder employs four analog DACs operating at 54 MHz to support composite NTSC/PAL video, S-video, and component video output. It also can provide as much as 24 bits of digital output to RGB888 devices. The digital component can output 8- and 16-bit BT.656 output and CCIR.601 with separate horizontal and vertical synchronizers.
To aid developers, the DaVinci software infrastructure supports development on these devices from low-level operating system drivers to application-level APIs (application-programming interfaces) to enable developers to implement digital video without developing and optimizing the video codecs or programming the DSP. Operating-system support includes MontaVista Linux LSP and open-source Linux. The application frameworks and APIs enable developers to exchange DaVinci components and codecs without modifying the application code. Developers can directly access the DSP and ARM cores.
The DM6443 and DM6446 are available for sampling now at $29.95 and $34.95 (10,000), respectively. The devices are pin- and software-compatible; they are also software-compatible with previous generations of TMS320C64x devices. Software components and tools, including Code Composer Studio and MontaVista (www.mvista.com) GNU tools work with the DM644x devices, and they are available now. Texas Instruments offers video and audio codecs for these devices for free evaluation and licensing. The DV-EVM (evaluation module) is available now for $1995. Codec demos in the evaluation module include H.264, MPEG-4, MPEG-2, AAC+, and G.711.
Texas Instruments, www.ti.com/thedavincieffectpr.
