DSP CHOICE FOR THE WIRELESS ASSISTIVE DEVICE (P08027)
Analog Devices Blacfinn family has three categories BF531/2/3, BF534/6/7, and BF561.
The BF561 is the dual-core processor. The initial product family is the ADSP-BF531,
ADSP-BF532, and ADSP-BF533. This offers all the ease of use and architectural
attributes of the Blackfin processor. These three processors are all completely pin
compatible - differing solely with respect to their performance and on-chip memory thus reducing risk and offering the ability to scale up or down depending upon the end
application needs. All three processors offer low power consumption with scaleable
performance from low-cost to very high performance.
The ADSP-BF531 is the low cost entry point into the Blackfin Processor family. It offers
an optimal balance between performance, peripheral integration, and price and is well
suited for the most cost-sensitive applications including portable test equipment,
embedded modems, biometrics, and consumer audio.
High Level of Integration
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52Kbytes of on-chip L1 memory configured as -o 32Kbytes of L1 instruction memory SRAM/Cache
o 16Kbytes of L1 data memory SRAM/Cache
o 4 Kbytes of L1 scratchpad SRAM
Parallel Peripheral Interface supporting ITU-R 656 video data formats
Two dual-channel, full-duplex synchronous serial ports supporting eight stereo
I2S channels
12 DMA channels supporting one and two-dimensional data transfers
Memory controller providing glueless connection to multiple banks of external
SDRAM, SRAM, Flash, or ROM.
Three timer/counters supporting PWM, pulse width, and event count modes
UART with support for IrDA®
SPI-compatible port
Event handler
Real-time clock
Watchdog timer
PLL capable of 1x to 63x frequency multiplication
160-ball (12mm x 12mm) Mini-BGA, 176-Lead (24mm x 24mm) LQFP, and
169-ball (19mm x 19mm) Pb-Free Sparse PBGA packages
Industrial temperature range
The datasheets are attached for this processor family.
I’ll be explaining what the BF537 Kit has to offer. The ADSP-BF537 EZ-KIT Lite
provides developers with a cost-effective method for evaluation of the ADSP-BF537
Blackfin Processor and its rich set of system peripherals, including the IEEE 802.3
10/100 Ethernet MAC and CAN 2.0B controller. This is a real good feature to have. It
has a TCP/IP stack with integrated device driver and example code is provided in
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VisualDSP++ release 4.0. This evaluation system was designed with an emphasis on
modularity and expandability. Go to www.analog.com for more details on expansion
products. With this EZ-KIT Lite, users can learn more about Analog Devices’ ADSPBF537 hardware and software development and quickly prototype applications.
Additionally, the ADSP-BF537 EZ-KIT Lite contains the National Instruments
Educational Laboratory Virtual Instrumentation Suite (ELVIS) interface. This interface
might come in handy with our Data Acquisition Device since, it is also from National
Instruments. This interface will allow using the DC voltage and current measurement
modules, oscilloscope and bode analyzer modules, function generator, arbitrary
waveform generator and digital I/O. NI ELVIS is a LabVIEW-based design and
prototype environment for university science and engineering laboratories curriculum.
For more details, go to www.ni.com
The EZ-KIT Lite includes an ADSP-BF537 Processor desktop evaluation board along
with an evaluation suite of the VisualDSP++® development and debugging environment
with the C/C++ compiler, assembler, and linker. It also includes sample processor
application programs, CE-approved power supply, a USB cable, both straight through
and cross-over Ethernet cables, a 3.5mm stereo cable, and a pair of stereo headphones.
Speed
MAC
ALU
Video
ALU
Bit shift
RISC
Ball Grid
Array
BF531 Family
600MHz
Two 16-bit MACs
two 40-bit ALUs,
BF537 Family
500MHz
Two 16-bit MACs
two 40-bit ALUs,
four 8-bit video ALUs,
40-bit shifter
RISC-like register and instruction model for
ease of programming
and compiler-friendly support
Advanced debug, trace, and performance
monitoring
160-ball CSP_BGA, 169-ball PBGA, and 176lead LQFP
four 8-bit video ALUs,
40-bit shifter
RISC-like register and instruction model for ease
of
programming and compiler-friendly support
Advanced debug, trace, and performance
monitoring
packages
Parallel peripheral interface PPI/GPIO,
supporting ITU-R 656 video data formats
Two dual-channel, full duplex synchronous
serial ports,
supporting eight stereo I2S channels
Four memory-to-memory DMAs Eight
peripheral DMAs SPI-compatible port
6 general-purpose I/O pins (GPIO) UART with
2
182-ball and 208-ball MBGA packages
IEEE 802.3-compliant 10/100 Ethernet MAC
(ADSP-BF536 and ADSP-BF537 only)
Controller area network (CAN) 2.0B interface
Parallel peripheral interface (PPI),
12 peripheral DMAs,
Event handler with 32 interrupt inputs Serial
peripheral interface (SPI)-compatible
Two UARTs with IrDA® support Two-wire
interface (TWI) controller Eight 32-bit
timer/counters with PWM support Real-time clock
(RTC)
and watchdog timer 32-bit core timer
48 general-purpose I/Os (GPIOs),
support for IrDA® Event handler Debug/JTAG
interfac
MEMORY 148K bytes of on-chip memory
16K bytes of instruction SRAM/Cache
Up to 64K bytes of instruction SRAM
Up to32K bytes of data SRAM/Cache
Up to32K bytes of data SRAM
4K bytes of scratchpad SRAM
External memory controller support for SDRAM,
SRAM, flash, and ROM Flexible memory
booting options from SPI® and external
memory
132K bytes of on-chip memory comprised of:
Instruction SRAM/cache; instruction SRAM;
data SRAM/cache; additional dedicated data
SRAM;
External memory controller with glueless support
for SDRAM
and asynchronous 8-bit and 16-bit memories
Flexible booting options from external flash, SPI®
and TWI
memory or from SPI, TWI, and UART host
devices
In comparing to these Analog Devices processors, Texas Instruments has a wide range of
processors. However, none of them are designed for our application. The closes one I
could find was MS320C6410/12/13/18 DSPs but it does not suite our application. Also,
most of the range of Processors in this family is much slower than the Blackfinn
processors. Only the high end processors are fast enough; but since they are the high end
processors; their development boards also could be a little bit more expensive. Although;
we are getting student discounts for these boards from a distributor, I’m sure we’ll need
to spend more for these boards. I’m sure we get the job done with these boards; however,
I’m not sure how efficient their support services could be, also the Blackfinn is the new
line of DSP processors so we should be getting plenty of support from them. Also I know
someone who recently finished their COOP at Analog Devices, so I’m sure we can get a
good deal. The other problem is that Analog Devices comes with its IDE called Visual
DSP, which is supposed to be pretty good, I’m not sure how great TI’s IDE (CCS- Code
Compressor Studio) is. I've looked at TI's DSP processors, but they are all designed for
video, audio, or wireless process exclusively. Blackfinn offers us flexibility that I did not
find in TI. Also, these are just my intuitions from research; we can further consult Dr.
Philips before we place our order. If the costs for both are the same, I’ll recommend we
go with the Blackfinn processors.
References:
http://focus.ti.com/paramsearch/docs/parametricsearch.tsp?family=dsp&sectionId=2&tab
Id=1941&familyId=1398
www.analog.com
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