Texas Instruments claims industry's lowest power DSPs

The C5504 and C5505 processors offer at a total power of less than 0.15 mW/MHz.

Rick Nelson, Chief Editor -- EDN, September 7, 2010

Allowing designers to create energy-efficient portable and battery-powered applications at higher levels of performance, Texas Instruments today announced the availability of TMS320C5504 and TMS320C5505 ultra-low-power digital signal processors (DSPs) operating at 150 MHz, providing 25% higher performance than previous C55x devices.

            The C5504 and C5505 processors offer what TI says is the industry's lowest total power at less than 0.15 mW/MHz; standby power is less than 0.15 mW. The processors feature up to 320 KB of on-chip memory and multiple integrated peripherals that reduce system cost by more than 20 percent compared to earlier C55x processors. Dynamic voltage and frequency scaling can be used to maximize the battery life for different operating conditions, allowing up to 40 percent additional battery life compared to earlier C55x processors.

The C5504 DSP can serve emerging portable applications that require up to 256 kB on-chip memory, such as portable voice recorders and MP3 players. The C5505 DSP builds on the C5504 by adding an additional 64 kbytes of on-chip memory, an integrated display controller, and fast Fourier transform (FFT) hardware acceleration for end equipment such as noise-cancellation headphones, musical instruments, medical monitoring systems, and biometric and seismic sensors.

Both devices are pin-to-pin and software compatible, offering the same energy efficiency and performance with a different peripheral set, allowing system designers to develop one platform that bridges different price markets by migrating between processors.

The TMS320C5504 DSP is priced at $6.20 in quantities of 1000 units. The TMS320C5505 is priced at $7.45 in quantities of 1000 units. Both devices are sampling now.