Chip integrates DSP and RISC
By Robert Cravotta -- EDN, January 10, 2002
The new programmable TMS320C5470 and TMS320C5471 DSPs from Texas Instruments combine the C5000 DSP core with the ARM7 Thumb RISC processor core into one device, reducing cost, power consumption, and board space by as much as 40% compared with applications using separate DSP and RISC processors. This heterogeneous dual-core architecture allows task partitioning to be optimized to the strengths of both types of processors and can provide performance and upgrade relief to those all-RISC-based applications that are incorporating more signal processing from the inclusion of new features.
Both devices operate the C54x DSP at 100 MHz and the ARM7 processor at 47.5 MHz. On-chip memory is partitioned into 64k words of DSP RAM, 8k words of shared RAM between the two processors, and 16 kbytes of SRAM for the RISC processor. The direct-DSP peripherals include two multichannel, buffered serial ports and an external SRAM interface. The direct-RISC peripherals include two UARTs; SPI; general-purpose I/O; I2C; and a memory interface for SDRAM, SRAM, ROM, and flash. The C5471 differs from the C5470 by including single-port 10/100 BaseT Ethernet in the peripheral set. Communication stacks for 10/100 Ethernet, Home Phoneline Networking Alliance, Bluetooth, and 802.11b are available for use with these devices.
Texas Instruments' Code Composer Studio Version 2 for OMAP provides full heterogeneous code development and debug for the ARM7 and TMS320C5000 DSP. RidgeRun's embedded RISC operating system, DSPLinux, complements Texas Instruments' eXpressDSP development-tool suite as an integrated Gnu-debugger Linux-devel-opment environment that includes a board- support package with emulation and hardware target evaluation modules available through Spectrum Digital (www.spectrumdigital.com). Accelerated Technology's (www.acceleratedtechnology.com) Nucleus board-support package and Wind River's (www.wrs.com) VxWorks real-time operating systems will also support these devices in the first quarter of 2002. The C5470 and C5471 DSPs are in production quantities and cost $15.50 and $17.57 (10,000), respectively.
Texas Instruments, 1-800-336-5236, www.ti.com.
