Happy Birthday Xilinx

Happy Birthday Xilinx
by Luke Miller on 02-14-2014 at 4:00 pm

I have never done this before, wished a company happy birthday. So here goes, Happy Birthday Xilinx! How does it feel to be 30? Looking good eh? Signing up for AARP? My family and I just sang and had cake and ice cream. They did look at me like I was nuts when I set a place at the table for a Xilinx FPGA. In all seriousness, over the years Xilinx… Read More


What does a 52% increase in DSP IP core licensing means?

What does a 52% increase in DSP IP core licensing means?
by Eric Esteve on 02-07-2014 at 11:18 am

The future market performance for an IP vendor licensing an IP based on a model with upfront fee plus royalties can be easily and safely evaluated if you look at the first part of revenue: upfront fee. Even if the royalty part is declining, exhibiting a 52% increase (Q4 2013 to Q4 2012) in upfront licensing fee is a promise that the future… Read More


DSPs converging on software defined everything

DSPs converging on software defined everything
by Don Dingee on 01-21-2014 at 5:00 pm

In our fascination where architecture meets the ideas of Fourier, Nyquist, Reed, Shannon, and others, we almost missed the shift – most digital signal processing isn’t happening on a big piece of silicon called a DSP anymore.

It didn’t start out that way. General purpose CPUs, which can do almost anything given enough code, time,… Read More


Xilinx, the University of FPGA

Xilinx, the University of FPGA
by Luke Miller on 01-13-2014 at 8:00 pm

More than ever, FPGA training is the key to success. Which is why Xilinx, provides free, no charge video’s that can speak to the seasoned FPGA designer or to the interested community. These Videos are not like your high school graduation taped by Uncle Frank. These are detailed, professionally edited Xilinx Videos that will give… Read More


A Brief History of DSP…Not By Any of Us

A Brief History of DSP…Not By Any of Us
by Paul McLellan on 12-04-2013 at 11:35 am

I came across an interesting article by Will Strauss which is pretty much the history of DSP in communication chips. Having lived through the early part of the history while I was at VLSI Technology I found it especially interesting.

At VSLI, our first GSM (2G, i.e. digital not analog air interface) was a 5-chip chipset. The DSP functionality… Read More


CEVA-XC Wireless Baseband Core

CEVA-XC Wireless Baseband Core
by Paul McLellan on 10-17-2013 at 5:51 pm

Eyal Bergman of CEVA announced their latest core yesterday at the Linley Microprocessor Conference. It’s their 4th generation CEVA-XC solution, which is the core of their offering for wireless baseband. It builds on 3 previous generations of CEVA-XC’s that were mainly targeted toward handset applications. This… Read More


Base Stations Move Away From Fixed Architecture DSP

Base Stations Move Away From Fixed Architecture DSP
by Paul McLellan on 09-06-2013 at 1:59 pm

Handsets moved away from fixed architecture DSP some time ago, driven by two main factors. Fixed architecture DSP consumed too much power to get good battery life in the smart-phone era, but the consumer air interface was changing fast: W-CDMA, HSPA, WiMax, 3G, LTE (which is actually a whole ‘spectrum’ of different… Read More


How to Benchmark a Processor

How to Benchmark a Processor
by Paul McLellan on 08-15-2013 at 2:11 am

How do you benchmark a processor? It seems like it should be easy, just run some code and see how fast it is. Traditionally processors were indeed benchmarked by raw performance like GMACS, GFLOPS, memory bandwidth and so on. But in today’s world where systems have become very complex and applications very compute intensive, the… Read More


The fixed and the finite: QoR in FPGAs

The fixed and the finite: QoR in FPGAs
by Don Dingee on 07-22-2013 at 1:00 pm

There is an intriguingly amorphous term in FPGA design circles lately: Quality of Results, or QoR. Fitting a design in an FPGA is just the start – is a design optimal in real estate, throughput, power consumption, and IP reuse? Paradoxically, as FPGAs get bigger and take on bigger signal processing problems, QoR has become a larger… Read More


The DSP is dead! Long Live the DSP… IP core!

The DSP is dead! Long Live the DSP… IP core!
by Eric Esteve on 07-20-2013 at 9:05 am

Trying to trace DSP birth as a standard IC product, you come back to the early 80’s, when a certain Computer manufacturer named IBM has asked to a certain Semi-Conductor giant (at that time) named Texas Instruments if they could turn a lab concept, Digital Signal Processor, into a standard product that IBM could buy to TI, like they… Read More