Embedded Processing

Feb 16 2007 9:04AM | Permalink | Email this | Comments (0) |
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As part of a continuing effort to bring more transparency, and efficiency, to the process of selecting embedded processors, components, and the surrounding logic, I have been working on, and refining, a method for processor vendors to best identify the processing sweet spot for their products. My first explicit attempt at this was the sidebar in a DSP versus microprocessor article that plotted in a graph the target processing areas between the different processor architectures available then. The chart identifies devices with a unified DSP/microcontroller architecture as a new class of processors. Last year, I refined the processor options to target sweet spot mappings with a new graph that better accommodates the expanding list of processing options, including multiple, heterogeneous processing elements, to today’s designers.

My article this week about the technical and market squeeze on 16-bit processors is a tangential expansion on the sweet spot model and mapping. The article is a follow up to an earlier exploration of how 32-bit processors are competing with 8- and 16-bit processors, with a focus on how 16-bit processors can defend their own processing sweet spot. Coincident with that article is an online guest column from Mike McCourt at Freescale Semiconductor about what is needed to make the devices options between 8- and 32-bit microcontrollers interchangeable.

Both my article and Mike’s column use a new term - the DSC (digital signal controller). The term refers to those processors formerly identified as unified or hybrid processor architectures. This is not the first time DSC has been used in this context, but I expect that you will see it more in short time. This usage is so new that a search on Google today with just DSC as the search term did not yield a single reference to signal processing in the first ten pages. In contrast, a search on DSP yielded the Wikipedia entry for digital signal processing as the first entry.

Until now, I have used the DSC term sparingly in conversations only, but I expect to be using it freely from now on. I will be acknowledging, defining, and using the DSC term in a larger way with the upcoming DSP/DSC Directory this April (the referenced link always points to the latest version of the directory). A Google search on digital signal controller reveals that several semiconductor companies are already using the DSC term for their products. For the short term, Ross Bannatyne’s article about the evolution of DSCs is a good place to find a focused description for these types of processors.