Texas Instruments, The MathWorks® Collaborate on DSP Development Tools for Optimized Software Prototyping, Testing, and Verification
New Software Tools Accelerate Development and Integration of DSP Code
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Houston, Texas, and Natick, Mass.--Aug. 26, 2002--Advancing the capabilities of DSP software development, Texas Instruments Inc. and The MathWorks announced two new software tools that simplify development and speed time-to-market for DSP-based systems. The new MATLAB Link for Code Composer Studio Development Tools (CCStudio) and the new Embedded Target for the C6000 DSP platform both put more powerful problem-solving capabilities in the hands of DSP developers for faster system integration. The MATLAB Link for CCStudio offers a significant enhancement of software verification and testing for TI's TMS320 family of DSPs, and the Embedded Target for C6000 provides a revolutionary new way of developing DSP code for the TI TMS320C6000 family.
"The tight integration of The MathWorks MATLAB and Simulink, and TI's CCStudio will clearly reduce the code development time on TI's DSPs," said Will Strauss, analyst and president, Forward Concepts. "This is clearly another advancement in making DSP software development easier."
The MathWorks MATLAB Link for CCStudio enables communication between MATLAB and TI's Code Composer Studio Development Tools, and simplifies software development, real-time software validation, analysis, and testing for all TI DSPs supported by CCStudio. The MathWorks Embedded Target for the C6000 DSP platform simplifies software design and analysis specifically for TI's C6000 DSPs by enabling rapid prototyping and direct generation of optimized code from The MathWorks Simulink system-level modeling product. The new tools are both eXpressDSP-compliant plug-ins, and they extend and enhance the development capabilities available through TI's CCStudio, turning DSP algorithm research directly into software implementation. Both the MATLAB Link for CCStudio and the Embedded Target for C6000 DSP are also key elements of The MathWorks recently announced Release 13 family of products that includes new versions of MATLAB and Simulink.
"The MathWorks is teaming with TI to transform the way that customers develop software for DSPs," said Ken Karnofsky, marketing director, DSP and Communications, The MathWorks. "Through our investment in system simulation and code-generation technology, developers can create software prototypes rapidly, then test and validate their software faster and with fewer errors."
Collaboration Automates Rapid Development
As code becomes increasingly lengthy in complex DSP systems, developers will be able to better manage the development process as a result of the TI-MathWorks collaboration. Using the Embedded Target for C6000 DSP and MATLAB Link for CCStudio tools, designers will benefit from the ease of use, efficiency, and increased capabilities made possible by the new tools for developing telecommunications, video and imaging, consumer electronics, industrial control, automotive electronics, defense systems, and other advanced DSP applications.
"TI's collaboration with The MathWorks is producing major advances in DSP software development," said Henry Weichman, worldwide C6000 product-line manager, TI. "The joint efforts of the two leading suppliers of DSP software development tools are pushing testing and validation earlier in the development cycle, helping our customers solve challenges and be more successful in building new and more robust TI DSP-based products faster."
For example, RadioScape Ltd. successfully used Simulink to design software for TI's DRE200 chip, and they benefited substantially from the collaborative effort of TI and The MathWorks.
"The MathWorks Simulink enabled us to validate and optimize our software design before we wrote one line of DSP code," said John Hall, CEO, RadioScape. "We were able to test and debug our software before the hardware design was completed. The MATLAB Link for CCStudio is a very significant development that will help us better leverage the benefits of both of these development tools in the future."
MATLAB Link for Code Composer Studio Development Tools
The MATLAB Link for CCStudio enables designers of systems based on TMS320C2800, TMS320C5000, or C6000 platforms to systematically test software, analyze and optimize code performance, and solve complex debugging problems with the advanced analysis and visualization capabilities in MATLAB. Unlike traditional programming methods, the MATLAB Link for CCStudio permits designers to easily verify DSP implementation against a validated algorithm design in MATLAB.
The MATLAB Link for CCStudio also supports high-speed RTDX Data Link for TI's new advanced JTAG XDS560 Emulator, providing a 2 Mbytes/s real-time data exchange from the host to the DSP target. This means MATLAB is enabled for real-time testing, verifying, and visualizing DSP code running on target hardware, and provides additional confidence that the system will perform according to the specification.
Embedded Target for C6000 DSP Platform
The Embedded Target for C6000 DSP is a design and code-generation tool that enables developers to create, validate, and deploy C6000 fixed and floating-point DSP software in less time. Designers can simulate a system-level model in Simulink's hierarchical block-diagram environment to produce an unambiguous, executable specification of the algorithm. The tool integrates TI's TMS320C62x DSPLIB library to generate highly efficient code for the C6000 platform from the model, and enables rapid prototyping on C6711 DSK or C6701 EVM evaluation boards. Automatic code generation not only reduces programming time, but also cuts down on errors from manual recoding while maintaining a single, easily managed algorithmic representation. This also enables early proof of the algorithm's viability and its eventual implementation on a C6000 DSP, and thus speeds development while optimizing the use of DSP engineering resources.
Availability, Pricing, and Information
MATLAB Link for CCStudio is available now from The MathWorks starting at US$1,000 per individual PC license. The Embedded Target for C6000 DSP is available now from The MathWorks starting at US$4,000 per individual PC license. For more information on how to start development using MATLAB and Simulink with TI DSKs, see www.ti.com/mathworkspr. To learn more about TI's real-time eXpressDSP software and development tools, and receive free evaluation tools, visit www.dspvillage.ti.com/ordercd4.
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Astute observers probably knew this announcement was coming, it's just that TI didn't want it getting drowned out by other news at its recent Developer Conference, and The MathWorks didn't want it to get overshadowed by the Rel 13 announcement from late July. The Rel. 13 press release did refer to new Simulink capabilities including "major improvements in DSP code generation," but left matters at that. Not long thereafter, MathWorks cofounder and president Jack Little delivered a collaborative keynote address with TI chairman, president, and CEO Tom Engibous at the Developer Conference. I didn't hear the speech, but I'll bet there were some very heavy-handed hints at things to come. Even without being there, with all this activity you had to know something was on the way.
And something big is starting to emerge, indeed. Remember the old days of software development where you bought a compiler from Vendor A, a debugger from Vendor B, and an emulator from Vendor C—and then tried to get them all to work together? Remember what a breakthrough in design efficiency it was when smart development-tool vendors combined these various functionalities into one tool chain, creating what we now know as an IDE (integrated development environment)? Well, these two firms are joining forces to push DSP system development ahead in the same fashion. And as DSP systems become ever more complex, often incorporating multiple cores, chips, or even boards, it's more necessary than ever to provide a tool set that spans the range from high-level conceptual design to actual coding and verification.
More specifically, until now many people have started a design by examining algorithms and other concepts in MATLAB, then doing coding in TI's Code Composer Studio (CCStudio), and then doing hardware evaluations with a prototyping board. With the two new tools announced here, both created at The MathWorks with assistance from TI, engineers have one environment with which they can test their algorithms, generate code for TI DSPs, and now also evaluate the real-world viability of these algorithms through hardware-in-the-loop debugging. At least for some devices, but the promise is there that the capability will soon exist for all TI DSPs.
What's being introduced isn't all-together new. In early 2001, The MathWorks brought out the Developers Kit for Texas Instruments' DSP 1.0, and it focused on code generation starting with Simulink block diagrams. That company has now split that one product into two, but greatly enhanced their capabilities. And what drives both products is the efficient transfer of data between development tools from each vendor.
The first product is targeted at product development. It integrates CCStudio debugging with MATLAB analysis and visualization. There's no longer a need to develop a test suite in MATLAB, write out the specifications manually, import them to CCS, download to the DSP, use CCStudio for debugging, get a memory dump, and manually bring that data back into MATLAB for analysis. Perhaps an engineer could write a Visual Basic program to drive CCStudio to automate some of those steps, but now the link is smooth and automatic.
There are actually three data paths between MATLAB and CCStudio, and the underlying DSP. First are function calls—now it's possible to invoke a function executing on a DSP, and to invoke the function from within an M file. With these calls, for instance, a designer can implement hardware-in-the-loop debugging to compare the ideal version of a system with the real-world implementation, and then uncover the source of any differences.
Second is a tighter integration for system debugging. The results of a debug session can move back into MATLAB for additional analysis. Third, the combination of tools can stream real-time data back and forth through RDTX, TI's new real-time data-exchange mechanism, which runs at rates up to 2 Mbytes/s. That speed allows engineers to look at a program dynamically from the MATLAB environment, even using that package's video and imaging capabilities in real time.
In addition, the link also exists for ancillary tool boxes from The MathWorks. For example, engineers can now work with the Filter Design Tool Box, find the filter coefficients they need, and download them directly into the DSP automatically.
"While the first tool offers short-term pain relief, the second provides the long-term cure," quips Ken Karnofsky, marketing director for DSP and communications products at The MathWorks. That second one he refers to is the Embedded Target, which allows faster proof of concept, the ability to show that an algorithm or system works in the real world and reduces coding errors because there's no need to port an algorithm manually from Simulink to a DSP. This support package is actually a split out of capabilities in the previously available product, but a few completely new features are part of the new package. Among them are optimized assembly libraries for the C62x, blocks that interface to RTDX for data transfers, and support for TI's DSP/BIOS.
To implement these features, the tool developers had to add some interesting features. For example, in the past the MATLAB world was always double-precision floating point, but now the product supports the single-precision as required on today's DSPs.
As for the DSP/BIOS, Omar Fattah, Express DSP plug-ins manager at TI, says that 80% of all new designs are using DSP/BIOS—and now with these products you can design a system that employs that real-time kernel without any low-level coding. Options in the development flow allow engineers to select if an application should run on DSP/BIOS instead of the default for Simulink, which is the Real-Time Workshop kernel.
As noted earlier, these impressive capabilities aren't available for every TI chip or family, not quite yet. For example, the CCStudio Link product works only with the C5000, C6000, and C28x families. It doesn't officially support the latest OMAP device just announced at the Developer Conference, but Fattah indicates that the support exists in-house, it only needs to go through a verification stage prior to a public release. Concerning the second product, today the Embedded Target is C6000-specific, and it supports the TMS320C6711DSK Development Kit as well as the C6701 EVM evaluation module. However, TI plans to expand the Embedded Target to other device families.
Indeed, both firms are emphatic that this is just the first step in a long-term collaboration. The eventual goal is to support all TI processors with this tool chain, doing so in phases. That's an ambitious goal, but if TI and The MathWorks take their strong backgrounds in complementary technologies and continue to cooperate as closely as this release indicates, they could create a de facto standard tool chain that will make it very difficult for vendors with similar products to compete.
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