> This really is unfortunate. But prices change and not always in the
> direction we want. Out of curiosity, which SHARC DSP are you using now? What
> are the time-critical functions in the new product? Are you planning to
> optimize them in assembly?
>
> Regards,


Hi Georgi,

We don´t have any product based on SHARC processors. But I frequently
use the ADSP-21061 EZ-KIT for testing preliminary algorithms and as a
interface with our boards, also for testing purposes.
We make boards for the telecom market, actually based on ADSP-218x
family.
These DSPs do the signaling (E1, ISDN), DTMF generation/detection,
call progress, conferencing, audio play and record, audio volume, etc.
Yes, we use only assembly. When you have 60 channels, every
instruction represents almost half MIPS (@8k[Hz]).
The new boards must process 240 channels, and do things like echo
canceling, compression algorithms for VoIP, etc. (Our customers are
never satisfied!)

I don't like the idea of a DSP farm: communication overhead, a lot of
physical space and pricey. The 218x family is also fading away. So,
it's time to change the DSP.

BlackFin: fast, cheap, but has little internal memory, the program
memory cannot be used as data memory and vice-versa, has no host port
interface (until now), no conditional operations.

SHARC: floating point support and very pleasant to program but not so
fast as BlackFin (16 bit precision), no support for 16 bit operands
and also doesn't have the host port interface.

TigerSHARC: floating point support, 16 bit support, very fast, unified
memory map (there is no program/data memory), it's also pleasant to
program (except for deeper pipeline, principally the stalls from
compute clock dependency), has a powerfull external bus (the host has
full access to it) but it's power hungry and expensive.

TMSC5XX: I do hate it's assembly language.

TMSC6XX: I din't finished my homework yet!

I just indicated the points that are more important for me!

Luiz Carlos