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Houston, Texas--Dec. 9, 2002--Allowing designers substantial product differentiation, Texas Instruments Inc. announced two new low-power DSPs that deliver 300 MHz of performance at the lowest price points in the industry, starting at $5.00. By leveraging the proven low-power TMS320C55x DSP architecture, the new devices enable embedded designers and manufacturers to offer next-generation functionality and longer battery life while realizing significant cost savings in applications such as embedded telecom, consumer audio, medical, biometrics, and industrial sensors (www.dspvillage.ti.com/siliconc55xp).
"With the C5501 and C5502 DSPs, TI has once again raised the bar on the performance, power, and price paradigm," said Will Strauss, president, Forward Concepts. "By delivering higher performing, low-power DSPs at an aggressively low price, TI is paving the way for even greater DSP proliferation, since real-time signal processing is becoming the key ingredient in virtually every innovative, smart, embedded device."
The dual-MAC TMS320VC5501 DSP and TMS320VC5502 DSP extend the world's most popular TMS320C5000 DSP platform to 32 code-compatible devices. The C5502 DSP samples can be ordered today for $9.95 (10,000-unit quantities) in 176-pin LQFP (24 mm × 24 mm) and 176-pin MicroStar BGA (15 mm × 15 mm) packages, while the C5501 DSP will be available in the third quarter of 2003 for $5.00 (10,000-unit quantities). TI also offers the C5502 DSP with 200 MHz of performance at $7.95.
Unmatched Performance/Power/Price Solution Enables Product Differentiation
The C5502 and C5501 are the first 300 MHz dual-MAC DSPs to be offered starting at $5.00 while boasting the industry's lowest power consumption at just under 200 mW. For industrial applications that require extended temperature, the C5501 and C5502 are the first 300 MHz DSPs to support temperatures ranging from –40° to 85° C. Both new devices are also the first 300 MHz DSPs to be offered in the easy-to-layout, low-profile quad-flatpack packaging (LQPF). The C5502 DSP's highly integrated peripheral set includes:
- 32K DARAM and 16K ROM
- 32-bit external memory interface (EMIF)
- 16 Kbytes of instruction cache
- 16-bit/8-bit enhanced host port interface (HPI)
- 6-channel direct memory access (DMA) supporting internal and external transfers
- I²C interface to microcontrollers and codecs for inter-chip communication
- up to 76 general-purpose I/O pins
For the most cost-demanding applications, the C5501 DSP also delivers low power and high performance with reduced RAM and EMIF capability. No other DSP on the market offers this level of performance with low power at these price points. Customers currently using the C5000 platform devices can easily migrate to the C5501 and C5502 as both DSPs are pin-for-pin compatible, maintaining TI's code compatibility commitment with 30 existing products in the platform.
Process Technology Leadership Provides Competitive Advantage
The new devices are made possible by TI's advanced process technology and commitment to research and development. TI has been at the forefront of process innovations such as 130 nm copper interconnect technology and 300 mm wafer production. The move to 300 mm wafers and a 130 nm process provides up to 2.4 times more die per wafer than 200 mm, and can reduce production costs by up to 60%. These breakthroughs enable more chips to be manufactured at a lower cost with higher performance and lower power consumption.
Extensive Support for Faster Time-to-Market
Designers can rapidly get to market with these new products by taking advantage of TI's comprehensive portfolio of development tools including more than 600 third-party algorithms and eXpressDSP Reference Frameworks, which allow developers to eliminate much of the initial low-level design decisions. Each of the new devices is also supported by TI's Code Composer Studio v2 Integrated Development Environment (IDE), the industry's most easy-to-use DSP IDE; the low-cost TMS320C5510 DSP starter kit; the C5502 evaluation module; and an array of tools such as a datasheet/errata, application notes, workshops, and online training. Customers can register today for the C55x one-day workshops that will begin in the first quarter of 2003 at locations around the world.
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Price used to be a very large part of the equation when selecting between a general-purpose processor and a DSP, but that issue is fading away as evidenced by the low price for the C5501/02. No, they're not "jelly bean" products quite yet, but at $5.00 and up they become attractive for many applications. Says Dennis Barrett, C5000 worldwide marketing manager, "These devices represent another proliferation node of DSP technology. They'll change user expectations of how to integrate DSPs."
These products fill in a gap in the roadmap for TI, which already offers more highly integrated—and thus higher priced—products in the single-core C55xx family. One nice thing is that all C55x devices, whether single core, multicore, or combo DSP+ARM, can run the same assembly programs, so you can easily scale an application up or down for more performance or lower price as needed. Although you can get samples of the 5502 today, production quantities won't be available until 3Q03; for the lowest cost part, the 5501, you won't see samples until 3Q03, with volume production at the end of next year.
While the $5.00 price point is impressive, not every user will be purchasing 10,000 pieces. If you need a smaller quantity, the 1000-piece price for the 5501 will be $6.75, and in that volume the C5502/300-MHz version runs $11.75. Also making the chips attractive in many applications is the fact that the standard operating range is –40 to 85°C, even at their full rated 300 MHz.
Some users might also like the packaging options; the devices are available in either an LQFP (low-profile quad flat pack) or a Microstar BGA (ball grid array). A BGA typically requires a circuit board with 6, 8, or even more layers, whereas the LQFP works on boards with 4 to 6 layers, again helping keep system costs down.
Of the two devices, the 5502 will appeal to users with more demanding I/O requirements, whereas the 5501 has the lower price. Key differences are in the amount of memory (16K vs. 32K words), the HPI (host-port interface with 8 bits vs. 8/16 bits), and the width of the EMIF (external memory interface, 16 vs. 32 bits). Barrett points out that the 5502 has a "tremendous" amount of data space for a device of this price level, and its 32K words serve either programs or data in any mixture. It also offers an I-Cache that works in conjunction with the EMIF and interfaces to SDRAM or SRAM. One user reports that running a codec algorithm through the I-Cache resulted in only a 5% degradation in performance compared to having that same algorithm in local memory. And if you don't need the I-Cache, you can shut down its clock to save power.
Both chips run at 300 MHz, giving so much headroom that some applications can get by with the devices' somewhat restricted onboard peripheral set and still benefit from the low price point. However, internally the memory works with 600 MHz clocking, so you get two reads out of every clock tick, a factor important for the dual-MAC architecture. Of the 76 general-purpose I/O lines, eight are dedicated to I/O, while others are muxed with the HPI and EMIF blocks.
Barrett points to the ADI Blackfin™ 21532 as the closest competitive product. The major improvements with the C5501/02, he believes, fall into three areas:
- First is power; the 550x specs 194 mW, whereas the 21532 specs 480 mW. One user working with radio applications reports that he expects 8× the battery life for his system, allowing his radio to run for 24 days on batteries with 2850 mA·h capacity. In contrast, the Blackfin-based system is calculated to run only three days on the same batteries.
- Second is the HPI, which is not available on the ADI part. Barrett says that even though the 550x runs control code "great," lots of users like to run a host RISC chip to accommodate legacy code or a special OS, and the HPI makes it easy to interface to a microcontroller.
- Third is compatibility with other processors. Barrett says code on the 550x is compatible with 30 other family devices, whereas the ADI part has only two others with which it can share code.
Code density is also an issue. For some sample algorithms, TI has determined that the 55x C code is one third the size and requires 40% fewer cycles compared to the Blackfin chip. On the development front, note that while the 5501/02 do work with TI's new XDS560 emulator, they don't incorporate the circuitry that allows them to run in the full HS-RTDX mode for high-speed downloads.
So how is this all possible? TI will produce these devices on 12" wafers using 130 nm copper interconnect technology. Clearly a company needs a large volume to justify this level of investment. Further, the devices aren't just produced from synthesized logic; they benefit from considerable hand optimization. Certainly, not every chip house has these capabilities, and smaller suppliers will find it difficult to come up with a competitive product.
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