Texas Instruments has integrated three TMS320C64x+ DSP cores each running at 1GHz on one die to create a 3GHz multi-core processor which remains code-compatible with the company’s single core C64+ devices.
The TMS320C6474 multi-core DSP has achieved 24,000 MMACS (16-bit) or 48,000 MMACS (8-bit) of measured performance, said TI.
Interestingly, it is fully code compatible with the company’s single core C64+ DSPs – the TMS320C6452, TMS320C6455 and those based on the predecessor TMS320C64x core, such as TMS320C641x devices.
A C647x multi-core processor with six cores will be announced in first quarter of next year.
Fabricated on a 65nm process die is packaged in a 23x23mm ball grid array (BGA).
The chip integrates both Viterbi and Turbo accelerators as well as a number of serialiser/deserialiser (serdes) interfaces, such as an SGMII Ethernet MAC (EMAC), an Antenna Interface (AIF) and Serial RapidIO.
On the memory side there is 32kbyte of both L1 program and L1 data memory per core, 3Mbyte of total L2 memory available in two configurations (a 1Mbyte/core or a 1.5Mbyte/1Mbyte/0.5Mbyte configuration), as well as a DDR2 memory interface running at 667MHz.
An evaluation module includes two C6474 processors, a high-speed DSP interconnect enabled by EMAC, AIF and SRIO serdes interfaces, and design files such as Orcad and Gerber.
The C6474 EVM also comes with an onboard JTAG header with a XDS560 emulator, as well as a board specific Code Composer Studio integrated development environment.
VirtualLogix is offering VLX real-time virtualisation software for the C6474. This allows the device to run TI’s DSP/BIOS kernel for the execution of traditional DSP tasks simultaneously with VirtualLogix Linux.
“With VLX, a single DSP efficiently supports a variety of tasks that formerly would have required both dedicated DSPs and a general purpose processor, allowing product differentiation to be built through the DSP/BIOS kernel and Linux software, rather than dedicated hardware components,” said Dave Beal, director product management at VirtualLogix.
The TMX320C6474 will be available before the end of the year.