DSPs Balance Power, Performance And Price

Juggling performance, power, price and size, the next generation of TigerSHARC processors, the ADSP-TS201/202/203, boast of delivering up to 1,800 MFLOPS/W, 85 MFLOPS per dollar, and 3,600 MFLOPS/in2 of board space. The devices can deliver 4.8 GMACS and 3.6 GFLOPS at 500 MHz and 600 MHz of performance, made possible via a balanced architecture. In the ADSP-TS201, the architecture provides I/O bandwidth of 5 GB/s. The DSPs also integrate 24 Mb of embedded DRAM from IBM, said to be three times greater than for comparable processors. They are pin-compatible and come in 25 x 25-mm, 576-ball BGA packages. The ADSP-TS201 is available in 500 and 600 MHz versions with 24 Mb of memory, while the ADSP-TS202 and ADSP-TS203 operate at 500 MHz with 12 Mb and 4 Mb of memory, respectively. Prices for the ADSP-TS201 (500 MHz), ADSP-TS202 and ADSP-TS203 are $299, $149 and $34.95 each/10K, respectively. ANALOG DEVICES INC., Wilmington, MA. (800) 262-5643.