ARM discloses strategy for DSP

Electronic News, July 15, 1996

Cambridge, U.K.--Advanced RISC Machines Ltd. (ARM) last week revealed its digital signal processing (DSP) roadmap. The roadmap calls for the signal capabilities of the ARM6 and ARM7 controller families to be extended this coming fall with the introduction of the company's planned "Piccolo" line of DSP co-processors.

The Piccolo architecture, according to ARM, will enable the company's partners to develop integrated microprocessor and DSP functionality. In a Piccolo system, the DSP and MCU tasks will both be developed with ARM's software and system development tools. This methodology is designed to accelerate and simplify the design of system hardware and software. To date, most signal processing solutions use separate, sometimes incompatible development tool chains for the MPU and DSP, according to ARM.

In an interview, Tim O'Donnell, president of ARM's North American operations, based in Los Gatos, Calif., hinted at the structure the Piccolo architecture will take. "We've taken a look at the memory bandwidth problems you get into with DSPs," Mr. O'Donnell said.

"In many of the designs where ARM is used, people put an ARM processor next to a DSP engine. For a lot of tasks that need to be done, neither ARM nor a DSP are right for the job. We took a look at this and said there is some synergy here. Maybe we can get a more cost-effective solution. In many cases it's something that could be handled in a co-processor."

ARM president and CEO Robin Saxby commented that the planned Piccolo architecture is designed to offer OEMs ease-of-use. "The Piccolo signal processing architecture is a unique development that lets us offer the full range of combined DSP and microprocessor performance in a cost-effective, easy-to-use way."

This October ARM plans to release details of its Piccolo architecture and begin a marketing campaign using the slogan "Piccolo--the ARM signal processing architecture." Piccolo products are expected to be capable of the sustained single-cycle throughput needed for high-performance DSP. The company also revealed that ARM semiconductor licensees are currently implanting first generation Piccolo cores for end-users, but declined to say who the early adopters are.

In addition to DSP enhancements to its ARM6 and ARM7 processors, the company will extend its software capabilities, according to Mr. O'Donnell. "We have to extend both--we have to extend our toolkit to offer that functionality," he noted, adding, "Rather than having to learn two separate architectures and write code to two processors, you can learn one toolkit and become more proficient on one, so you can write better code."

Mr. O'Donnell also revealed that this is just the first in a series of planned enhancements to the ARM architecture. "We're showing the ARM has broad capabilities to it and can be extended by the addition of co-processors. We will be looking at other areas where we may extend the capability of ARM. This is one of the first ones we have done. The first was for the ARM7500SE--we extended its floating point accelerator capability."

ARM is active in markets where signal processing is widely used and applications require DSP functionality combined with traditional embedded control capability. ARM processors are being used to perform DSP functions in areas such as wireless communications, image/graphics processing and disk drive control.