FROM EDN EUROPE: Run multimedia DSP with less power

Targeting embedded multimedia products, the newest processor in Analog Devices' Blackfin DSP family, the ADSP-BF533, operates at a maximum 600-MHz clock frequency. Because of the device's dual-MAC architecture, it can deliver 1.2 GMACs of throughput. At 300 MHz, the power demand is 0.15 mW/MMAC. Analog notes that it is competing for sockets where processing-power requirements might otherwise dictate an ASIC or VLIW (very-long-instruction-word) processor. It intends this product to absorb as many of the system-level requirements of such designs as possible, with support in place for several real-time operating systems and network-protocol stacks.

To support multimedia applications, the chip has a video I/O provision to connect directly to encoders and decoders using ITU-R 656; it also offers eight channels of audio. Analog says that this hardware support for video substantially reduces the necessary software support. Devices offer 148 kbytes of on-chip memory and can address 128 Mbytes externally.

To keep power demand low for portable designs, the chip uses dynamic power control; when the application requires less power, the core scales back in both frequency and voltage via an on-chip programmable voltage regulator. Running at the full 600 MHz, the 533 uses 280 mW. The company says that the part uses less than half its resources to decode an MPEG-2 stream at 720×480-pixel resolution and 30 frames per second. The 533 will cost $19.95 (10,000); the 300-MHz family member (BF531) costs $4.95 (10,000).

Analog Devices, +44 1932 266000, www.analog.com.