DSPs/NPUs: Sharing the communication spotlight - Comment

Electronic News, April 1, 2002 by Ed Nuber, Robert Munoz

MICHAEL JORDAN IS LIKE a DSP chip and Kobe Bryant is like a network processor chip.

Consider this: Michael Jordan has been a professional basketball star for longer than a decade. He's versatile, high-performance and known around the world. Like Michael, DSPs have been the high-performance, highly flexible commercial stars of the semiconductor industry for about a decade.

Kobe Bryant, for his part, has been a rising and improving pro basketball star for about the last three years. His career is now in a fast-growth phase. The same is true of network processors. At about the same time Kobe began lighting up the pro basketball world network, processors started dazzling the semiconductor world.

There are other commonalities linking these two basketball stars and two types of communications processors: the ongoing, non-stop pursuit of outstanding performance, agility and efficiency.

Granted, DSPs and network processors perform different functions and are mainly complementary rather than competitive processors. Neither have DSPs come out of retirement the way Jordan has since they've never been retired in the first place.

And DSPs are nowhere near the end of their careers as Jordan probably is. Yet it's still intriguing to evaluate how the two processor types compare in terms of applications, functions, number of companies and pricing.

Some key DSP applications include wireless cell phones; 2G, 2.5G and 3G wireless infrastructure, including base stations; PC and embedded retail modems; Internet telephones (also called IF phones); and hard disk drives. Using high-speed mathematical computations, DSPs enable execution of communication algorithms on various types of data. For example, in a typical communications system, a DSP performs source coding and channel coding of the data.

Network processors are used in communications equipment such as packet switches, routers, media gateways and DSL access multi-plexers. Unlike a DSP, a network processor does not perform any signal processing. Rather, it sends and receives information across data networks, manipulating packetized versions of either voice, data or video signals, or all three. The network processor performs packet/cell classification, reassembly, policing, statistics, buffer management queuing, scheduling/shaping, segmentation and modification of packets and/or ATM cells.

DSPs and network processors are not found in all of the same types of equipment. For example, there are no network processors in cell phones and modems, whereas each cell phone and modem contains at least one DSP.

However, media gateways are one type of equipment where DSPs and network processors might be found together in the same system. A media gateway provides media mapping and/or transcoding between potentially dissimilar networks, such as between voice and data networks or wireless and wireline networks.

In general, network processors are priced substantially higher than DSPs. Some mid- to high-end network processors can cost between $600 and $2,000. Lower-end network processors are priced in the $80 to $100range. DSPs generally are priced lower. The low-end, high-volume DSP market has a typical average selling price under $10 per chip; the high-end, high-performance DSP market is in the $100 to $200 range.

"There will definitely be $600 to $2,000 network processors, yet there will also be lower-grade, lower-priced network processors used in integrated access devices, cable modems and other end-point equipment where DSPs are typically used," said Eric Mantion, a senior analyst with Cahners In-Stat Group. (Cahners In-Stat is owned by Reed Business Information, the parent company of Electronic News.)

Still, DSPs are going to remain a much larger market than network processors, according to Forward Concepts. One of the reasons is that DSPs are used in infrastructure applications as well as numerous endpoint, client applications such as cell phones, modems and Internet telephones. Network processors are used in infrastructure applications yet are not going to be nearly as widely used in the end-point applications as DSPs, he said. Yet Strauss emphasizes that the DSP and NP chips are complementary types of chips that have different growth curves.

"The network processor market certainly shot up faster than DSPs," he said. "Yet the two technologies have a symbiotic relationship: They perform different functions within communications equipment."

Michael and Kobe are shining stars in their sport. So are DSPs and network processors in today's semiconductor industry. It will be fun to watch how this all plays out.

Ed Nuber is the senior manager of DSP marketing at Agere Systems. Robert Munoz is the senior manager for NPU marketing at Agere.