Multicore SoC achieves 5x power efficiency improvement for real-time applications

Analog Devices (ADI) has introduced eight new SHARC processors as part of its latest high-performance, power-efficient, real-time series that delivers peak performance greater than 24 giga-floating-point operations per second using two enhanced SHARC+ cores and advanced DSP accelerators (FFT, FIR, IIR). The ADSP-SC58x and ADSP-2158x series consume less than 2W at high temperature, making the new processor line-up more than 5 times more power efficient than previous SHARC products and more than 2 times more efficient than the nearest competitive processors. This advantage provides industry leading digital signal processing performance for applications where thermal management sets the limit for power consumption, or where the higher costs and lower reliability of fans cannot be tolerated. Applications include automotive, consumer and professional audio, multi-axis motor control, and energy distribution systems. The ADSP-SC58x products complement the SHARC+ cores and DSP accelerators with the addition of an ARM Cortex-A5 processor, with FPU and Neon DSP extensions to handle additional real-time processing tasks and manage peripherals used to interface to time-critical data in audio, industrial closed-loop control, and industrial sensing applications. These interfaces include Gigabit Ethernet (with AVB and IEEE-1588 support), USB High-Speed, mobile storage (including SD/SDIO), PCI Express and a rich variety of other connectivity options for a flexible and simplified system design. The ADSP-2158x family, without the ARM Cortex-A5 core, is designed for applications where a DSP co-processor is typically needed and includes the two SHARC+ cores and DSP accelerators with a peripheral set matched to the cores. With software IP protection a growing industry security concern, ARM TrustZone security and an onboard crypto hardware accelerators are included. For applications where reliability is a critical requirement, memory parity and error-correction hardware provide higher data integrity. The overall integration and low-power features offered by the new ADSP-SC58x and ADSP-2158x series deliver significant BOM and board area savings and provide lower design complexity and reduced time to market for today’s complex applications. The ADSP-SC58x/2158x is supported by ADI’s award winning CrossCore Embedded Studio development tool suite, providing design engineers with interactive, real-time development tools that help optimize their design and speed time to market. Additionally, ADI and Micrium have collaborated to offer µC/OS-II and µC/OS-III real-time kernels on both SHARC+ and ARM Cortex-A5 cores, as well as Micrium’s USB Host, USB Device and file system stacks running on the ARM Cortex-A5. Analog Devices also provides a Linux Add-In for CrossCore Embedded Studio, enabling customers interested in taking advantage of the communication stacks and application packages available for embedded Linux, running on the ARM Cortex-A5 core. The ADSP-SC58x EZ-KIT-Lite development boards and ICE-1000/2000 emulators facilitate the creation, test, and debug of advanced applications, says the company.