Date: 13/07/2010

New development platform for digital signal processor from TI

Texas Instruments has introduced a new development platform and a new speed grade option for the TMS320C6457 digital signal processor (DSP). It targets markets such as defense, networking, test, imaging and industrial. TI also provides a pin compatible upgrade path to 1GHz and 1.2GHz versions of this device.

Some of the key features of TMDSEVM6457L EVM are:
1. Development tool which includes connectivity options such as a breakout card, allowing customers to individually connect certain peripherals to configure the EVM for their needs.
2. The EVM comes with free software including a copy of TI's Code Composer Studio (CCS v4.2) development environment.

"By offering high value, optimized development solutions at various levels of performance, we are addressing a wider range of developers' requirements, providing them with tools not previously accessible due to cost and performance constraints," said Sandeep Kumar, marketing manager of TI's growth markets and medical business. "TI is listening to and addressing customer needs and developing flexible platforms with a variety of cost and feature options to ease their design processes."

The key features of C6457 are:

1. The 850 MHz to 1.2 GHz C6457 is based on TMS320C64x+ DSP core and can deliver 6800 (16-bit) MMACs to 9600 MMACs of peak performance and a cycle for cycle performance improvement of up to 30 percent compared to previous DSP generation.
2. It has a 2 MB of on-chip L2 memory (up to 1 MB cacheable), 32-bit DDR2 EMIF (667 MHz) and memory, cache and bus architecture enhancements.
3. Consist of Serial RapidIO (SRIO) and Gigabit Ethernet MAC serializer/deserializer (SERDES) interfaces for efficient inter-processor communications.
4. Has Two Turbo-Decoder Coprocessors (TCP2) and one Viterbi Coprocessor (VCP2) to provide on-chip acceleration for wireless applications therefore eliminating the requirement of Forward Error Correction (FEC) functionality from the DSP core.
5. Backwards code compatible with other devices in the C62x and C64x DSP family.

Price:
The 850MHz speed grade is priced at US$67 for 1Ku volume.
The TMDSEVM6457L Evaluation Module (EVM) is priced at US$399.

Availability: All TMS320C6457 versions and development toolkits are available.

For more information visit: www.ti.com/c6457-pr