Embedded Microprocessor Watch

Issue #166 -- 09/29/2003

Editor: Tom R. Halfhill  

In this issue:

Tensilica Makes Music
Tom R. Halfhill - Senior Editor  {09/29/2003}

Tensilica has introduced a new package of audio extensions and software codecs for its Xtensa V configurable microprocessor core. Known as the HiFi Audio Engine, the optional extensions include 54 new instructions that accelerate common algorithms for digital-audio encoding and decoding. Tensilica’s target applications are portable MP3 players, automotive sound systems, TV set-top boxes, smart phones, and home entertainment systems.

To gain an advantage over audio processors that use other embedded-processor cores—especially the popular ARM-based chips from Cirrus Logic—the HiFi Audio Engine can process audio data with 24-bit precision instead of the more-common 16-bit precision. The difference in fidelity is audible to some listeners. Furthermore, by accelerating the audio algorithms with optimized instructions, Tensilica’s extensions let developers run the processor at a lower clock frequency, thereby saving power. Alternatively, the processor could handle additional tasks, perhaps reducing the system’s total chip count.

Tensilica assigned the task of developing the HiFi Audio Engine to CuTe Solutions, an independent design center in Hyderabad, India. The CuTe Solutions engineers have many years of experience in digital audio, so Tensilica left the specifications fairly open. Instead of specifying the instructions in advance and using CuTe Solutions merely to write the code, Tensilica relied on CuTe’s experts to define the extensions as well as implement them.

Ideally, Tensilica would have introduced the HiFi Audio Engine four years ago, when MP3 players were just starting to take off and early design wins were as plentiful as dot-coms. That was when Cirrus Logic introduced its innovative EP7209 and EP7212 Maverick audio processors, which anticipated one of the few consumer markets that has grown at a prestissimo tempo since 1999. (See MPR 11/15/99-03, “Cirrus Logic Makes Music With ARM.”)

Still, the market for audio processors continues to grow, and the unit volumes and revenues are large enough to justify developing an SoC. Tensilica’s HiFi Audio Engine is a useful supplement to the standard Xtensa V instruction set.

Microprocessor Report readers can access the full story here: www.mdronline.com/mpr/h/2003/0929/173901.html. To find out more about Microprocessor Report, please visit: www.mdronline.com.

3D Gaming Grows in Influence
Peter Glaskowsky - Editor-in-Chief  {09/29/2003}

The commercial significance of 3D gaming on the PC has grown rapidly during the past few years. Although the overall rate of PC sales in established markets such as the United States changed little between 2000 and 2002, revenue from the gaming-enthusiast niche grew strongly. New OEMs, such as AlienWare, and established vendors, such as Dell, began offering system configurations specifically designed for gamers. Just this month, both Intel and AMD introduced PC processors aimed at the gaming market.

Gaming was one of the first applications for personal computers. Some of the earliest PCs were created with features such as color graphics and joystick inputs to support game play. Over time, PCs evolved to be more-general-purpose systems, and game consoles were created to provide the best game-playing experience.

By the late 1990s, even as companies such as 3Dfx and Nvidia were developing graphics chips for 3D gaming on the PC, there was essentially nothing else on the PC platform expressly designed to support gaming. The introduction of the PlayStation 2 seemed to show that consoles would remain the best gaming platform available, and Microsoft’s decision to base its Xbox console on the PC suggested that reusing PC technology for gaming would require sacrificing the general-purpose nature of the PC architecture.

Consoles still have certain advantages over the PC. They can be faster than a PC using similar technology; they are more reliable; and they support a business model in which game sales can subsidize the retail price of the hardware. On the other hand, PCs can change more quickly, adopting the latest available technology for each product cycle—and game developers can incorporate these new capabilities into each new generation of game, rather than waiting for a next-generation console to appear.

When the 3D-gaming market proved itself immune to the malaise affecting the rest of the PC industry, it began attracting more-serious attention from PC chip and system vendors. Graphics-chip and processor vendors—which until late in the 1990s actively stifled bleeding-edge hobbyists from pursuing performance enhancements such as overclocking—began to tacitly accept such efforts and now are looking for ways to assist them.

Gaming has been seen as an impediment to the acceptance of LCD monitors, because liquid crystals respond to electrical stimuli relatively slowly. CRT monitors can refresh their images in less than 8ms, but an LCD can take up to 40ms to change its display. Gamers place a high value on fast displays and have therefore been slow to accept LCDs. Samsung recently introduced a 17-inch LCD with a 16ms response time, which will likely prove popular among gamers, but the resulting 60Hz effective frame rate is generally considered only a bare minimum for gaming. More work remains to be done in this area, and gaming may yet accelerate the adoption of more-advanced display types, such as organic LED technology.

Even more significant were Intel’s announcement at its Developer Forum of the Pentium 4 Extreme Edition (which can alternatively be thought of as the Xeon MP Home Edition) and AMD’s introduction last week of the Athlon 64 FX-51, which is derived from the Opteron 100 series. Gaming systems based on these chips, plus the latest high-end 3D cards, will sell for prices rarely seen in the past decade.

Success in the gaming market can position an OEM for better sales in other areas. We don’t expect server processors to take over many home or business PCs, but every customer who buys a high-end system instead of a midrange machine contributes to the health of our industry.

To find out more about Microprocessor Report, please visit: www.mdronline.com.

ARC Accelerates Cryptography
Tom R. Halfhill - Senior Editor  {09/22/2003}

ARC International is offering a new package of microprocessor extensions and security software that can improve the performance of common cryptographic algorithms by an order of magnitude or more. The package, called ARCprotect, includes new instructions, registers, and middleware as licensable intellectual property (IP) for the current ARCtangent-A5 and future ARC microprocessor cores.

The extension instructions focus on the popular AES, DES, and 3DES (triple DES) encryption/decryption algorithms that are the foundation of many network-security protocols, such as IPSec (Internet Protocol Security), IKE (Internet Key Exchange), SSL (Secure Socket Layer), TLS (Transport Layer Security), and Encrypted PPP (Point-to-Point Protocol). They also accelerate the MD-5 and SHA-1 secure hashing algorithms.

ARC’s new IPShield security software, an optional part of the ARCprotect package, works with the company’s RTCS TCP/IP stack for real-time embedded systems. The IPShield software and TCP/IP stack are also available for the ARM, MIPS, Motorola ColdFire, and IBM/Motorola PowerPC architectures. However, the ARCprotect extensions are specific to the ARCtangent microprocessor cores. All the software and synthesizable IP are shipping now.

The ARCprotect extensions—and the IPShield software that uses the extensions to accelerate the IPSec protocol in ARC’s TCP/IP stack—are worthy additions to the ARC IP library. They expand the options available to SoC designers who need fast, secure networking in embedded systems.

Microprocessor Report readers can access the full story here: www.mdronline.com/mpr/h/2003/0922/173801.html. To find out more about Microprocessor Report, please visit: www.mdronline.com.

PMC Enhances Portfolio
Markus Levy - Senior Editor  {09/15/2003}

Many embedded-processor companies these days have realized the importance of design reuse. We therefore see many new processors rolling out with a slightly different peripheral mix, or with new operating frequencies, or maybe even built on a new process. This design reuse makes good business sense for the early stages of our industry’s economic recovery. PMC recently announced five new processors that capitalize on its year-old E9000 core, rounding out its product portfolio and addressing multiple market segments.

In short, the new products include enhanced RM9000x2 and RM7000 devices. The RM9000x2 products build on PMC’s dual-core 1GHz devices by adding peripherals such as Gigabit Ethernet. The RM7000 family was extended with the new RM7900 devices based on the E9000 core.

For the most recent generation of RM7000 processors, PMC inserted the seven-stage core taken from the RM9000x family. Although the peripheral sets and basic features of the RM7900, RM7935, and RM7965 are unchanged from prior-generation RM7000 devices, the new pipeline gives these products a frequency boost to 900MHz. The E9000 core also introduces new capabilities, including hardware branch prediction, ECC on the L2 cache, and EJTAG.

Microprocessor Report readers can access the full story here: www.mdronline.com/mpr/h/2003/0915/173701.html. To find out more about Microprocessor Report, please visit: www.mdronline.com.

Triscend Revs Up for Motors
Tom R. Halfhill - Senior Editor  {09/15/2003}

Trying to ascend above the fray of 32-bit microcontrollers, Triscend is revising its line of ARM7-based field-configurable MCUs. New on-chip peripherals and features will make them more suitable for industrial applications—particularly for motor controllers. The revised parts will supersede the company’s current line of ARM7-based MCUs next year.

The new A7V05 family initially has four members, all with ARM7TDMI processor cores running as fast as 70MHz. Rich in on-chip peripherals, they also boast a feature that sets Triscend’s MCUs apart from all others: field-programmable logic. Each chip has 512 cells of configurable system logic (CSL), equivalent to 6,400 FPGA gates. This feature allows embedded-system developers to customize the MCUs for specific applications without spinning silicon for an ASIC or SoC.

The top-of-the-line A7VT05 chip is especially interesting, because no other 32-bit MCU combines an ADC, CAN2.0B controller, USB 1.1 transceiver, and dual 10–100Mb/s Ethernet MACs. The CAN controller supports the latest CANopen and DeviceNet protocols. As CANs, USB ports, and local-area networks become more widespread in industrial machinery, Triscend’s new MCUs should enjoy an advantage over lesser (albeit less-expensive) MCUs.

Microprocessor Report readers can access the full story here: www.mdronline.com/mpr/h/2003/0915/173702.html. To find out more about Microprocessor Report, please visit: www.mdronline.com.

Two Threads for TriCore 2
Max Baron - Principal Analyst  {09/08/2003}

On June 17, 2003, at In-Stat/MDR’s Embedded Processor Forum (EPF 2003) Erik Norden, senior architect for Infineon, presented the company’s TriCore 2 multithreading extensions, which enable the core to deliver high performance using frugal cache sizes and low-cost external memory. Expecting to show in-system performance improvements of 200% to 400% over single-thread architectures, Infineon’s designers are scheduling the first “proof of the pudding” chip for 1Q04.

TriCore 2’s caches don’t support “fairness” of thread availability, as found in Intel’s Hyper-Threading approach; instead, Infineon has ensured its control over threads by dedicating a separate memory hierarchy to the second, more critical, thread.

Microprocessor Report readers can access the full story here: www.mdronline.com/mpr/h/2003/0908/173601.html. To find out more about Microprocessor Report, please visit: www.mdronline.com.

NEC Processor Gets Secure
Markus Levy - Senior Editor  {09/02/2003}

At the rate things are going, there soon won’t be an embedded processor without hardware acceleration that supports the Internet Protocol security standard (IPSec). Just this year alone, a large number of processor vendors—including Brecis, IDT, and Renesas—have integrated this technology. Most recently, NEC Electronics entered the fray with its VR4133, containing its VR4130 MIPS-based core and an internally developed IPSec accelerator.

What makes this announcement particularly interesting to us is that the VR4133 is a descendant of the VR4131, which NEC Electronics aimed at the PDA market. To create the VR4133, NEC Electronics added a few peripherals and has targeted a different market (i.e., wireless-LAN and SOHO routers, as well as storage systems and industrial and medical devices).

The VR4133’s IPSec accelerator is a hardware unit that executes the encapsulation security payload (ESP) processing algorithms, part of the IPSec Protocol suite designed to provide 128-bit encryption. The performance of this accelerator determines the throughput level for secure transactions. NEC Electronics claims this accelerator provides a 300% boost over a software-only solution. The hardware unit also handles header-authentication functions, using the SHA-1 hash function.

The VR4130 is a 64-bit superscalar CPU based on the MIPS III and MIPS16 instruction sets, with some MIPS64 extensions. The VR4133 is supported by two-way set-associative 16K level 1 caches and 133MHz SDRAM and SysAD buses.

Microprocessor Report readers can access the full story here: www.mdronline.com/mpr/h/2003/0902/173501.html. To find out more about Microprocessor Report, please visit: www.mdronline.com.

AMD, on Geode-Trek, Buys IA Division From National
Kevin Krewell - Senior Editor  {09/02/2003}

AMD has added a new dimension to its commitment to the x86 instruction set and its embedded processor strategy by acquiring from National Semiconductor the Information Appliance (IA) business unit, including the Geode family of processors. The Geode processor was most famously featured in a number of failed Web pad designs (including the 3Com Audrey) a few years ago, but it has continued to find use in thin-client computing, including Windows terminals from Wyse Technology. AMD completed the acquisition of certain intellectual property and assets of the IA business unit, plus 125 former National employees, on August 25, 2003.

Microprocessor Report readers can access the full story here: www.mdronline.com/mpr/h/2003/0902/173502.html. To find out more about Microprocessor Report, please visit: www.mdronline.com.