TI KeyStone DSP + ARM processors

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Consul

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I was wondering if anyone here (which is to say, Rochey) knows anything about these KeyStone chips that TI apparently makes:

http://www.ti.com/lsds/ti/dsp/keystone_arm/overview.page

Multicore DSP + ARM on a single chip. Upwards of 4 ARM cores + 8 DSP cores on a single chip. Sounds pretty punchy. I have this dream of designing some kind of open platform for audio DSP, like an Arduino for audio, and a chip like this could be the center of that, though probably not 4 + 8 cores. There's one that's 1 ARM core + 1 DSP core. That might make a decent basis for an open audio DSP platform, especially since it looks like they have SDRAM interfaces built in. Throw in a chip (yes, I know it's not that simple, but you know what I mean) for interfacing with the computer, and maybe a reasonable solution could present itself.

So I guess my question is, whereabouts do these things cost, and is there a decent open (GCC) toolchain for them? If they're hundreds of dollars for even the cheapest ones, they might not be a viable option, and I'm back to the significantly less powerful Cortex M4.

I have other questions that could probably be answered by the datasheet that I have yet to read. One of them has to do with fixed-point vs. floating point options, but again, datasheet.
 
dmlandrum said:
I was wondering if anyone here (which is to say, Rochey) knows anything about these KeyStone chips that TI apparently makes:

http://www.ti.com/lsds/ti/dsp/keystone_arm/overview.page

Multicore DSP + ARM on a single chip. Upwards of 4 ARM cores + 8 DSP cores on a single chip.

It's the ghost of the TMS320C80!

-a
 
Hi gents!

On a total step sideways, what DSP chip would you recommend for a chap like me trying to test the waters with DSP programming?
I've got some C & C++ under my belt... a little assembly, but nothing remarkable.

I don't know if there is any evaluation kits that streamline things a bit or not?
 
Sammas said:
Hi gents!

On a total step sideways, what DSP chip would you recommend for a chap like me trying to test the waters with DSP programming?
I've got some C & C++ under my belt... a little assembly, but nothing remarkable.

I don't know if there is any evaluation kits that streamline things a bit or not?

Try some LPC4300 (Cortex-M4) kit like this one from NGX Technologies:
http://uk.farnell.com/nxp/om13027-598/eval-cortex-m4-lpc4300-xplorer/dp/2217598
(guess it's also available from Newark)


There are also other Cortex-M4 variants like the one based to STM32-F4 series, STM32-F4 Discovery kit comes to my mind (costs less that $20).
http://www.st.com/internet/evalboard/product/252419.jsp

You can use CMSIS DSP libraries with these processors, see more about CMSIS, for example floating point biquad usage:
http://mazsola.iit.uni-miskolc.hu/DATA/segedletek/arm/cmsis/CMSIS/Documentation/DSP/html/group___biquad_cascade_d_f1.html#gaa0dbe330d763e3c1d8030b3ef12d5bdc
 
Sammas said:
Hi gents!

On a total step sideways, what DSP chip would you recommend for a chap like me trying to test the waters with DSP programming?
I've got some C & C++ under my belt... a little assembly, but nothing remarkable.

I don't know if there is any evaluation kits that streamline things a bit or not?

I bought one of these and it's a good place to start.

-a
 
Those 55x DSP's are a great place to start. My only issue is that they are a 16bit architecture, which means everything needs doing in double precision.

But, they have USB 2.0 on them. I'm very excited about the possibility of using one as an audio interface. Just needs software now. *sigh*.


 
Rochey said:
Those 55x DSP's are a great place to start. My only issue is that they are a 16bit architecture, which means everything needs doing in double precision.

But, they have USB 2.0 on them. I'm very excited about the possibility of using one as an audio interface. Just needs software now. *sigh*.

They are good starting points. I think the USB 2.0 is Full Speed only, not High Speed, and also I think the audio framework doesn't support sampling frequencies higher than 48 kHz.

-a
 
Interesting comparison of DSP vs. Cortex-M4 vs- Cortex-A8 by DSPConcepts from 2011 AES:

http://www.dspconcepts.com/sites/default/files/white-papers/2011%20AES%20-%20DSP%20vs%20Micro%20rev%202.pdf

Another paper on Cortex-M4 :

http://www.arm.com/files/pdf/dspconceptsm4presentation.pdf

They got 7 band GE running on 120 MHz M4 using only 11% of CPU time.

Now that Arduino was mentioned in the first post found that there is a new Cortex-M4 (Kinetis K20 48Mhz, used @96 MHz) based Teensy 3.0 Arduino software (IDE) compatible board with I2S interfaces (RX+TX). In addition to stereo I2S the interface also supports TDM. 96 * 1.25 DMIP's isn't a lot of power but anyway you could really use it for some small audio related Arduino like projects. Add some serial (SPI) MRAM if you need more memory like for playing different test tones for setting up PA rig, or an SD card reader for playing back some backing tracks on your solo gigs, or convert the device to a portable audio recorder.

http://www.pjrc.com/teensy/schematic.html
http://www.pjrc.com/teensy/teensyduino.html

Now the KeyStone seems to be supporting PCIe, it can be expected that someone makes sooner or later a PC audio interface using some of these chips.
 

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