NEW YORK-Gearing up for next-generation wireless, Texas Instruments has developed a digital signal processor that is able to execute 2,000 millions of instructions per second.
“Two thousand MIPS is 10 times the performance of our nearest competitor,” said Thomas Brooks, digital baseband products marketing manager for TI’s Wireless Business Communications Unit.
The new 250 MHz DSP, the TMS320C6202, is based on wideband Code Division Multiple Access technology. It is designed to deliver the bandwidth-on-demand performance levels needed for third-generation wireless’ provision of voice, high-speed packet data and video services, the company said.
The new DSP will enable base station manufacturers to lower the cost per channel while also increasing performance and flexibility and speeding time to market, according to Texas Instruments. It also saves energy, using less than two watts of power.
The DSP provides three megabits of on-chip Random Access Memory to extend channel processing as callers enter and leave cell areas.
“In many (base station) designs, this large amount of on-chip memory can eliminate the need for external program and data memory, saving component costs, space and power,” the company said.
Among other features, the ‘C6202 DSP also has a 32-bit expansion bus that doubles data throughput onto and off of silicon chips for increased flexibility in processing data from multiple channels.
The new DSP also enables the use of `C’ compilers, which are “high-level, English-like software instructions,” in addition to or instead of `assembly’ software language, “which is like machine-to-machine instructions,” Brooks said.
Texas Instruments plans to sample the ‘C6202 during the first quarter of next year, with volume production scheduled for mid-1999. The expected price will be $25 per 25,000.
