DSPs And Embedded Linux: A Natural Evolution
Consumers Increase Demands On
Embedded Devices
In the high-tech industry, the widespread adoption of
new enabling technologies is largely driven by consumer
demand for expanded features
and additional services. Today's
consumers, well accustomed to
the robust functionality found on their desktop systems, have come
to expect this same functionality from their handheld devices. The
challenge for developers and OEMs lies in finding a solution
that allows them to incorporate such functionality into these
devices in the most competitive, cost-effective and timely
manner possible.
Some manufacturers of embedded devices are addressing this challenge by simply running their
processors at higher clock speeds. The drawback here, of course, is compromising battery life.
Consumer demand for greater functionality, coupled with the needs of OEMs to stay competitive, has forced
manufacturers to rethink the technology behind their embedded devices. Many are turning to embedded Linux as the solution.
DSP+ARM+Linux
Digital Signal Processors (DSPs) already form the core of multimedia, wireless networking and broadband
devices that require significant real-time processing. DSPs are particularly well suited for multimedia, voice
processing, wireless communications, compression and
encryption tasks. As the demand for Internet-enabled
mobile devices continues to grow, many of these new appliances based on DSP technology will run
embedded Linux to take advantage of the operating system's exceptional flexibility, high reliability and ease
of Internet connectivity.
DSPs are ideally suited for compute-intensive tasks, and system designers often add them to a system to
handle the "hot-spot" processing demands of multimedia.
Recognizing this trend, DSP market leader Texas Instruments has introduced the TMS320DSC processor
family that combines a DSP core with an ARM processor on a single chip. The DSP+ARM architecture offers
developers the best of both worlds: A General Purpose Processor (GPP) that runs Linux and its large base of
software well, with a DSP core that executes real-time tasks in parallel. The result is a high-performance
processor with lower power requirements and easy programmability.
What It Means For Developers And OEMs
The TI DSP+ARM architecture and the flexibility of Linux
enable developers to leverage the strengths of each
to dramatically improve the battery life, reliability, memory
management and performance of the devices they are
designing. Linux has a large base of Open Source
software to dramatically reduce time-to-market.
New advances in Internet and multimedia standards
are often implemented on Linux first. Software that
bridges between the DSP and ARM processors makes
it easy for developers to use the power of DSPs without
requiring expertise in DSP algorithm development. Even
generic media-handling capabilities becomes easy
to add to devices using open multimedia interfaces that
reduce development cycles from weeks or even months
to a matter of days.