DSPx session to be active; Intel imposes

Electronic News, May 15, 1995 by Jim DeTar

SAN JOSE, CALIF. - Developments in the digital signal processor (DSP) market will be spotlighted this week at the DSPx Conference and Exhibition here, including a growing battle between Intel's Native Signal Processing (NSP) strategy and traditional DSP devices. Intel will host an event to spotlight NSP - the company's strategy to put DSP - like capabilities on the microprocessor to reduce chip count and the amount of geography needed to add capabilities such as graphics, video and sound.

DSP competitors such as Texas Instruments, Motorola and Spectrum Signal Processing will tout their new DSP solutions as a more cost-effective way to accomplish adding capability to computer systems. At the same time, DSP companies are also taking the initiative to counter Intel's NSP push. For example, IBM is preparing to elaborate on its MWave DSP strategy and its views on NSP.

The conference will also serve as a backdrop for DSP vendors to preview their new technologies, some of them for the first time. Among them, a new company called Butterfly DSP - which has acquired a DSP chipset from Sharp Computers of Japan. Butterfly, based in Vancouver, Wash., will today formally announce the incorporation of the company and unveil its first product - the BDSP9124/BDSP9320 chipset - to be touted as the industry's fastest DSP chipset targeted at high-end, real-time applications ranging from cellular base stations to spectral analysis.

On the software side, Synopsys will announce formation of a 22-member team focused on R&D and marketing of DSP design software products. The charter of the core team is to provide Synopsys customers with a path from concept to implementation for DSP-based systems. The DSP core team will include newly-appointed director of DSP marketing John Cooper, responsible for driving the company's DSP design tool marketing efforts worldwide, and new technical marketing manager Ravi Subramanian.

Meanwhile, Motorola last week told Electronic News it will unveil a variety of products and announce new partnerships at the conference. Tom Starnes, Motorola's DSP technical marketing manager, outlined the company's strategy, saying that demand continues to increase at a rapid rate.

"Motorola's focus on providing cost-effective DSP solutions is in support of the growing demands of our customers. As the demands for raw performance continue, our investment in fab facilities and technology will meet our customers' needs and more sophisticated DSP applications."

Motorola was the first company to announce it will move to a 12-inch wafer last year (EN, July 18, 1994) and rumors circulated last week that the company will announce a 12-inch fab in the June time-frame (see The Antenna, page 4).

Motorola is planning to make at least four, and possibly as many as five, announcements at DSPx. Among them is a speed upgrade of the company's 24-bit DSP56002, which will be bumped to 80MHz. Although the company will be talking about the speed upgrade at DSPx, it is not expected to formally announce it until next week.

In addition, Motorola will disclose a new DSP at the conference, the DSP56005, which will be added to the 24-bit 56000 family. Sources said the new device is targeted for applications where a minimum of 16-bit performance is needed and a 24-bit processor can give designers an incremental performance boost; for example in communications and digital cellular systems. A spokesperson said Motorola is believed to be the only company currently making 24-bit DSPs.

Motorola also will announce a price reduction across all three of its DSP families: the 16-bit DSP56100 family , 24-bit DSP56000 family and 32-bit DSP96002 family. The spokesperson said the price cuts are based on the additional volume resulting from increased fab capacity. Motorola has added four new manufacturing facilities within the past year.

Spectrum will introduce a new card for graphics and image processing applications that will use the TI C80 DSP. The PCI/C80 card will be immediately available from both Spectrum and TI and implements a 32-bit Peripheral Component Interconnect (PCI) interface with TI's GOPS TMS320C80. Spectrum said it will sell the PCI/C80 for $7,200 in North America.

Among the other companies that will be introducing and/or demonstrating products and discussing business agreement at DXPx are: Math Works, which will announce SIMULINK tools for DSP simulation and code generation; and VoCAL Technologies, which has signed an agreement with Siemens to provide advance telephony software supporting Siemens' new multifunction DSP-based data pump.

Additional DSP market trends will be aired at a DSP Core Users' Group meeting hosted by DSP Group, which will follow the formal conference. The DSP Group mini-conference, planned for Friday, May 19 at the company's Santa Clara headquarters, will include companies such as VLSI Technology, GEC Plessey and Siemens discussing DSP trends and applications.