Pro audio gets a new dose of SHARC processors

Analog Devices Inc. is getting ready to sample the SHARC ADSP-21469, making it the first family member to debut in the fourth generation of SHARC digital signal processors.

The ADSP-21469 operates at the family's highest performance ever—up to 450MHz/2700 MFLOPS—with the addition of hardware accelerators as well as application-enabling features that include increased on-chip SRAM, a high-speed DDR2 SDRAM external memory interface, and link ports.

Optimized for pro audio applications such as studio recording equipment, high-end effects processors, commercial audio, and modeling applications, the SHARC ADSP-21469 more than doubles the 32bit floating-point family's performance compared with earlier SHARC processors. A key factor is the addition of hardware accelerators for widely used signal processing operations: FIR (Finite Impulse Response), IIR (Infinite Impulse Response), and FFT (Fast Fourier Transform).

Further performance uplift and plenty of headroom are provided by additional features that include up to 5Mbit of on-chip SRAM, which represents a 60 percent increase over previous SHARC processors and enables even faster, more efficient execution of effects processing.

A reduction in instruction opcode size frees up as much as 30 percent of the on-chip memory for application code storage. For balanced system performance, the SHARC ADSP-21469 is one of the first floating point processors to include a high-speed DDR2 SDRAM external memory interface.

To support the computation- and data-intensive processing demands of higher sample rates and advanced audio formats, the ADSP-21469 also offers link ports that enable data transfers between two SHARC processors, and provide a parallel command interface for faster data movement than is enabled by the processors' serial peripheral interface (SPI).

These application-oriented processors are code-compatible with prior generation SHARC processors and make use of familiar development tools such as ADI's CROSSCORE software and hardware tools that include the VisualDSP++ integrated development and debug environment (IDDE).

Per-unit pricing is $31.50 in quantities of 1,000. Sample units will be available in Q1 09.

- Ismini Scouras
eeProductCenter