TI Rolls Out Low-Power Processor Roadmap
Portable Design News, Wednesday July 23, 2008
Placing a notable stake in the ground, Texas Instruments today introduced its low-power processor roadmap with more than 15 new multi-architecture devices across four product lines.
According to John Dixon, Low Power Processor Product Line Manager at TI, designers will be able to bring portability to applications requiring the high-precision and fast time-to-market provided by floating-point processors, as TI’s new roadmap includes the industry’s lowest power floating-point digital signal processors (DSPs). TI’s new devices also enable maximum battery life with the industry's lowest power fixed-point DSP. Customers will also have the option to design portability and graphical user interfaces (GUI's) into their products using TI's new ARM9 and ARM9-plus-DSP system-on-chips (SoCs).
The types of products that benefit most from very low power fall into three general power budget categories. First are those that that draw their power from another source, but need low power for USB connectivity or low heat dissipation. Next are devices where consumers expect batteries to last an entire work day and the third category are devices that consumers expect to function for two or more weeks without a battery change. Throughout the next 12 months, TI will offer an embedded process solution for each of these power categories with more than 15 new devices within four product lines.
Low power and high precision with new TMS320C674x DSPs: Developers will have the ability to bring portability to audio, medical, industrial and other applications requiring the precision, wide dynamic range and time-to-market benefits of floating-point DSPs. Using three times less power than existing floating-point DSPs, the C674x devices deliver 24-32 bit accuracy and are the industry's lowest power floating-point DSPs. Slated for delivery in Q4 2008, the power consumption ranges from 8 mW in standby mode to 385 mW total power.
High performance at half the power with TMS320C640x DSPs: The C640x DSPs use half the power of existing high performance devices in TI's TMS320C6000 DSP platform, giving system designers the ability to add portability to processing-intensive applications including software defined radio, industrial instrumentation and emerging markets. Based on TI's high-performance C64+™ core, the devices offer power consumption as low as 0.125 mW/MMAC and performance up to 2400 MMACs. Through pin-for-pin and software compatibility with various OMAP-L1x and C674x products, the C640x processors offer a new level of scalability and will be available in early 2009.
Multimedia performance and low power with OMAP-L1x SoCs: Enabling developers to integrate feature-rich GUIs into their portable designs, the new OMAP-L1x product line includes ARM9 and ARM9-plus-DSP architectures. The six new devices will offer a variety of peripherals for networking, and will run Linux or the DSP/BIOS real-time kernel for operating system flexibility. The product line is also pin-for-pin compatible with various devices in the new C674x and C640x product lines. Power consumption ranges from 8 mW in standby to 400 mW total power, and the devices will be available in early 2009.
Maximum battery life with TMS320C550x: For developers requiring the longest battery life, TI will be extending its TMS320C5000 DSP platform with new C550x devices. The new DSPs include large on-chip memory as well as an optimized FFT/FIR coprocessor for faster analysis, and still cut power consumption levels to 0.34 mW in standby and 18/46 mW at 60/100 MHz - half the power of existing C5000 devices. Applications such as multi-parameter medical, noise reduction headphones and portable audio/music recording will benefit from the performance, peripherals and security scheme of the C550x DSPs.
Silicon and associated software and tools will begin sampling in Q4 2008 and will roll out throughout the next twelve months. Prices will vary by device but will start at less than $9 (100 units).
Texas Instruments Inc., Dallas, TX (800) 336-5236 [ww.ti.com]
