Apr 01, 2002 San Francisco, CA
Texas Instruments Inc. previewed the latest addition to its TMS320C6000 digital signal processor family in the briefing rooms of the Embedded Systems Conference here, touting it as providing more millions of multiply accumulates (MMACs) per watt than competitors' parallel-processing machines. Targeted at new-generation home media servers and security systems, the part is being released this week.
With a 300-MHz clock, the C6411cranks out 2,400 million instructions per second and 1,200 MMACs. The device consumes 250 milliwatts from a 1-volt source, less than any DSP in its class, said Yvonne Cager, C6000 marketing manager. Priced at $39 each in 10,000-piece lots, the C6411 is also the most powerful DSP "per watt per dollar," she said.
TI compared the C6411 to Analog Devices Inc.'s 21535 and Motorola Inc.'s MC8101 implementation of the StarCore architecture. Each of those competing devices will produce 1,200 MMACs, but at a higher cost and will consume more power, said Jackie Brenner, C6000 architecture engineer. The ADI Sharc device would burn 700 mW in a version priced at $68 in 10,000-piece lots, and the MC8101 would consume 500 mW at an $81 piece price. On a MMACs per dollar metric, the C6411 comes out ahead, Brenner said.
The C6411 is the latest iteration of TI's very long instruction word architecture, a parallel processing approach designed to produce more mathematical work with each tick of its computer clock. TI has directed the C6XX architecture toward muscle-bound applications. The current machine includes a 16-kbit Level 1 cache and a 256-kbit Level 2 cache, as well as a 64-channel DMA.
TI believes the power of the C6411 makes it particularly useful for security applications like iris scanners. Iris scanning provides a more unique match than fingerprint sensing, said Brenner. Both iris scanning and fingerprint sensing utilize visual pattern recognition with 8-bit math. The iris scanner juggles 250 independent variables, compared to 80 for fingerprint matching, she said.
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