Productive Product: Texas Instruments announced a line of floating point digital signal controllers. The TMS320F2833x devices provide 300 million FLOPS at 150 MHz at costs typically associated with fixed point processors, which means developers can accomplish more tasks using fewer chips, and thereby consume less energy. Software development is also simplified. Technology from solar power inverters to automotive radar applications can now be addressed with floating-point control. Algorithms such as a Fast Fourier Transform used for complex calculations will see a 200 percent improvement from an equivalent 32-bit fixed-point implementation. Overall system bandwidth is also increased with the addition of a six-channel DMA controller that offloads the CPU from servicing the analog-to-digital converter. F2833x controllers are also fully software compatible with the previous TMS320C28x controllers. Available now are the F28x-based eZdsp development tool, plus the IQ Math virtual software library. The actual chips will ship this fall.
Texas Instruments
972-995-2011, www.ti.com