Move DSP signals with RapidIO
Staff -- Test & Measurement World, 4/1/2006
Texas Instruments has introduced an evaluation board and software development kit for its 1-GHz C6455 digital signal processor (DSP). The C6455 packs plenty of processing power, but moving those processed digital signals can slow system performance. The C6455 boosts data-transfer rates by moving bits through a 10-Gbps Serial RapidIO (sRIO) interface. The serial interface eliminates the need for an FPGA to handle communications. By losing the FPGA, DSP designs use less power.
The TMS320C6455 evaluation kit ($1795) consists of two boards, a motherboard and a daughterboard, each containing a C6455. They communicate over the sRIO bus through an AMC connector. The included software-development kit lets you develop applications such as a video transport system where one DSP encodes video and transfers it to the other over the sRIO bus for decoding. A decoded video stream can then connect to a PC for display through the board's Ethernet, USB, or PCI/HBI interfaces.
Texas Instruments, www.ti.com/dsp .
