Embedded Processor Watch

Editor: Tom Halfhill

In This Issue:

• Sony's Emotionally Charged PlayStation Chip
• BDTI Benchmarks TriCore's Hybrid DSP
• Industry Resources: Learn IC Fab in Your Spare Time!
• New Embedded IC Announcements

Sony's Emotionally Charged PlayStation Chip

It was a tough audience of engineers, techies, and trade journalists at the recent Embedded Processor Forum in San Jose. But Sony Computer Entertainment blew them all away with a live demo of its next-generation PlayStation video-game console. The prototype machine contained a new multimedia chip set that was custom-designed by Sony and Toshiba.

The CPU, known as the Emotion Engine, upsets the traditional notion of an embedded game processor. Whereas game CPUs have typically been cheap and wimpy compared to those in PCs, the Emotion Engine is neither. At a whopping 240 square millimeters in a 0.25-micron process, the 10.5-million-transistor chip will cost more than $100 to manufacture, according to the MDR cost model. The companion rendering chip measures 279 square millimeters, and a third processor contains a complete first-generation PlayStation CPU for backward compatibility. All told, the silicon in this game machine might cost more than the product's street price -- indicative of a business strategy that emphasizes razor blades (video games) over razors.

Vendors of PC processors break out in a cold sweat at the mere thought of a die larger than about 180 square millimeters. To build these monster chips, Sony and Toshiba are fitting out two special fabs. It sounds like a bet-the-company proposition, but there's reason behind the madness. Since 1994, when Sony introduced the original PlayStation, sales have surpassed 54 million units, and the run rate is two million units per month. In unit sales, it's the most successful single product Sony has ever made.

While the Emotion Engine is not cheap, neither is it wimpy. It's based on a superscalar MIPS R4000 core, but it has a new set of 128-bit integer SIMD instructions. At its target frequency of 300 MHz, it packs a floating-point punch of 6.2 GFLOPS, three times that of Intel's 500-MHz Pentium III with SSE and 15 times that of a Celeron-400 (which lacks SSE). With the Emotion Engine pumping out 75 million polygons per second and the rendering chip drawing polygons at 2.4 billion pixels per second, the new PlayStation will have real-time graphics that rival the computer-generated animation in movies like Toy Story.

Expected to debut next year, the new PlayStation will also have a DVD-ROM drive, Dolby Digital (AC-3) and Digital Theater System (DTS) sound, 32M of memory, a modem, IEEE-1394, and USB. That's not too shabby for a game console. It could perform many of the functions for which people buy PCs. It could also throw a monkey wrench into the plans of companies that are working on DVD-based home-entertainment products and cut deeply into the market for WebTVs and similar devices -- an event we have already forecast. --K.D.

BDTI Benchmarks TriCore's Hybrid DSP

Berkeley Design Technology, Inc. (BDTI) has measured the performance of Infineon's TriCore V1.1 hybrid DSP/microcontroller, comparing it to DSPs and other hybrid devices from Texas Instruments and ARM.

According to the benchmark results, Infineon (formerly Siemens) can legitimately claim that TriCore's hybrid architecture crunches numbers like a DSP. An 80-MHz TriCore should have no trouble holding its own against TI's 100-MHz midrange DSP, the TMS320VC549. It should also outperform a 150-MHz TMS320C2700, a 66-MHz Hitachi SH-DSP, and a 70-MHz ARM7TDMI with Piccolo.

It's interesting to note, however, that TriCore's performance relative to the 'C549 is not as much faster as one might expect, given TriCore's dual-MAC capabilities. (The 'C549 can execute only one MAC per cycle.) The shortfall results from performance penalties imposed by TriCore's data-alignment restrictions.

Still, in terms of clock-cycle efficiency, TriCore's superscalar architecture and SIMD capabilities give it an edge over the other hybrids tested. This provides yet another reminder that higher clock speeds and MIPS ratings don't necessarily translate into superior performance. Like all processors with SIMD capabilities, TriCore shines when executing algorithms that have a high degree of data parallelism.

For more information, see the special BDTI report authored by Jennifer Eyre and Jeff Bier, "Inside the Siemens TriCore" (http://www.bdti.com).

Industry Resources: Learn IC Fab in Your Spare Time!

"Practical Integrated Circuit Fabrication" is a 2.5-day, $950 seminar on fab-process ins and outs. The course is designed for people who will be directly involved with fab operations, product planning, marketing, design/process engineering, equipment supply, or semiconductor-materials supply. A technical background is suggested. Contact Integrated Circuit Engineering Corp. at http://www.ice-corp.com.

New Embedded IC Announcements

New Embedded IC Announcements TMS320C5416 (Texas Instruments): a DSP that runs at 160 MHz, has 128K words of SRAM, and three multi-channel buffered serial ports. It's built in a 0.18-micron CMOS process. Price: $33.50/10,000; samples: 4Q99; production: 3Q00. Call TI at 800.477.8924.

ADSP-2185M (Analog Devices): a 16-bit DSP that includes 0.66 Mbits of on-chip SRAM, consumes 0.4 mA/MIPS at 75 MIPS, and comes in a 100-TQFP or 144-mBGA package. Price: $9.50/25,000; samples: 3Q99; production: 2Q00. Call ADI at 800.262.5643.

HCS320 (Microchip): a code-hopping encoder for remote keyless entry. It has a 32-bit code-hopping mechanism, E2PROM data storage, and comes in an 8-pin PDIP package. Price: $1.01/1,000; production: now. Call Microchip at 602.786.7668.