Date: 15/02/2011

Multicore DSP with eight 1.25 GHz DSP cores with 320 GMACs and 160 GFLOPs performance

Texas Instruments Incorporated has released a multicore DSP based on its TMS320C6678 digital signal processor (DSP) core for applications such as multimedia gateways, IMS media servers, video conferencing servers and video broadcast equipment. TI says its C6678 offers OEMs a highly dense media solution that is both power and cost efficient at the system level. TI's C6678 features eight 1.25 GHz DSP cores with 320 GMACs and 160 GFLOPs of combined fixed- and floating-point performance on a single device, enabling users to consolidate multiple DSPs to save board space and cost, as well as reduce overall power requirements.

"There is no other DSP in the industry that can support all of the key features needed for the development of high density and high quality multimedia infrastructure products in one device, like ours," said Brian Glinsman, general manager of TI's communications infrastructure business. "Our C6678 based multimedia solution delivers superior levels of performance coupled with improved channel density, providing customers with the right tools, software and support to help accelerate their designs to market."

To ease application development, TI is offering portfolio of video, audio and voice codecs which includes the H.264, H.263, MPEG4, MPEG2, JPEG, VC1, Soren Spark encoders and decoders. New codecs and functions including Universal SVC, MVC, AVC Intra and H.265 are also supported on the C6678 DSP. The portfolio of audio codecs includes the AAC, AACv2, AC3, MP3, WMA8, WMA9 encoders and decoders. The codec portfolio also includes a comprehensive set of wireline and wireless voice codecs.

The C6678 is also software compatible with TI's existing TMS320C6000 DSPs, enabling vendors to reuse their existing software and preserve their investment in TI embedded processors.

Price: Each at $169 for 1K units