TI Mixes ARM cores with DSPs and programmable logic
1–10 of 13 posts
Re: TI Mixes ARM cores with DSPs and programmable logic
#2I hardly even understand FPGA's but I don't think TI's newest tech will obsolete it. Intel just purchased Altera for $16.7B and I've already seen them release updates to their line including fabrication on 14nm or less.
Re: TI Mixes ARM cores with DSPs and programmable logic
#3Do there exist free (as in freedom) compilers for the DSPs of TI?
Re: TI Mixes ARM cores with DSPs and programmable logic
#4That's nice.
In the article, a TI rep is quoted saying, "We believe customers will be able to develop their devices three times faster than when using FPGAs — in days rather than weeks"
I'm kind of wondering about that. Maybe if you were already up and running with syslink/codecengine/xdctools, etc. IMHO, working with TI's c6X DSPs was just awful, and their software suite was one of the only dev environments that has made me pine for Xilinx's stuff.
Syslink? Perhaps the worst-behaved linux kernel module I've ever encountered. Xdctools? Did anyone ever really want yet another build system? And in javascript? When we were working with the toolchain, even TI considered it inscrutable - their own image loader was a hacked example buried deep in the xdctools examples dir. And support? Every time we sent an email to TI, all we got was, "have you asked this question in the TI forums?" It was such a ridiculously poor standard of support that eventually it became a joke on our team.
But I know that in embedded, the quality of the software tools is rarely considered. Oh well.
Re: TI Mixes ARM cores with DSPs and programmable logic
#5Do there exist free (as in freedom) compilers for the DSPs of TI?
There was some press material around that, as well as some preliminary support in the Sourcery toolchain back around the 2010-2012 timeframe. But I haven't heard anything about that effort lately, and I think that it has stalled.
Re: TI Mixes ARM cores with DSPs and programmable logic
#6Yeah, the headline on eetimes is a bit...sensationalistic. It may be useful for cellular signal processing, but there are quite a few other things that fpgas are used for. Now, were this chip to have a proper PCIe x16 bus dangling off it, and elements useful for video encoding/decoding, it may be more intriguing. Right now, it's just an interesting toy for telcos.
Re: TI Mixes ARM cores with DSPs and programmable logic
#7This is additional information that what I suspected was happening, is, which is that the combination of some hard "cores" + FPGA fabric is becoming useful. The original Xilinx run at this used Power PC cores but the current stuff (Zync) using ARM cores has had much better traction.
Looking at the TI site they want $328 each[1] in singles, not a great price point but not horrible given their performance but I don't think it crosses into the 'revolutionary' category.
That said, one of these and a couple of those 4 GSPS 12-bit ADC's and you'd have a pretty sweet front end for an oscilloscope. My new 200Mhz scope only has 2.5GSPS front ends on it and it cost $6K.
[1] This compares to $60 for singles of the Zync chip.
Re: TI Mixes ARM cores with DSPs and programmable logic
#8Yeah, the headline on eetimes is a bit...sensationalistic. It may be useful for cellular signal processing, but there are quite a few other things that fpgas are used for. Now, were this chip to have a proper PCIe x16 bus dangling off it, and elements useful for video encoding/decoding, it may be more intriguing. Right now, it's just an interesting toy for telcos.
So... we got a new plataform who is better to a specific range and eetimes says "TI Obsoletes FPGA"? That's what i think when i post it.
Re: TI Mixes ARM cores with DSPs and programmable logic
#9I hardly even understand FPGA's but I don't think TI's newest tech will obsolete it. Intel just purchased Altera for $16.7B and I've already seen them release updates to their line including fabrication on 14nm or less.
But with intel buying altera and they starting to use FinFET technology , i'm quite curious how XILINX,TI and other will react.
Re: TI Mixes ARM cores with DSPs and programmable logic
#10I hardly even understand FPGA's but I don't think TI's newest tech will obsolete it. Intel just purchased Altera for $16.7B and I've already seen them release updates to their line including fabrication on 14nm or less.
But with intel buying altera and they starting to use FinFET technology , i'm quite curious how XILINX,TI and other will react.
Xilinx invested heavily in TSMC's TSV interposer and likely their IN-FO fan-out packaging. These allow them to integrate more silicon area in the same package space. It can potentially offset the technology node gap, and maybe for lower cost. Yes, TSV is expensive, but a process node is even more expensive.