Articles
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Military applications such as radar, Software Defined Radio (SDR), smart munitions and target detection systems, Electronic Warfare (EW), aircraft imaging, and many more benefit from Digital Signal Processors (DSPs). DSPs accelerate performance using deterministic processing and have capabilities that include real-time signal processing, extremely high throughput, and reprogrammability. However, signal processing demands for radar, EW, and other programs continue to increase so DSP system users continue to search for innovation that will boost performance. That need is being answered by use of a combination of Quad Data Rate (QDR) Static Random Access Memory (SRAM) that - at a minimum - doubles the performance of more traditional Synchronous Dynamic Random Access Memory (SDRAM).
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Designing a general-purpose FPGA DSP card for EW, radar applications using the latest generation of FPGAs
Designing a general-purpose FPGA card that addresses the universe of Electronic Warfare (EW) and radar applications is a challenge. For any individual application, defining the requirements of the system and determining the optimal architecture for that particular solution is fairly straightforward. However, the problem is much more complex when trying to target a wide spectrum of use cases with a single FPGA module. The goal is to provide a flexible architecture that also enables the use of the latest FPGA features.
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Making the case for using ATCA in military signal processing
Data in the modern battlefield has become as essential as munitions. Detection, target tracking, and the decisions that must be made – based on data acquired from sensors and cameras mounted to Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) or a myriad of radar and sonar devices on a cruiser – all require sophisticated algorithms executing on powerful computing equipment. Traditional methods of Digital Signal Processing (DSP) have used specialized FPGA equipment, multiprocessor VME, and OpenVPX solutions, but a new class of computing has the potential to replace some of those expensive and highly specialized processing elements.
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Acquisitions and dissolutions shuffle the mobile market deck
Late last month, Intel quietly acquired Tempe, Arizona-based Fujitsu Semiconductor Wireless. To my knowledge, no news announcement has been made, but this is a very important move for Intel as Fujitsu Wireless had developed probably the most advanced m...
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Floating-point multiprocessing with C66x DSPs from Texas Instruments
Fixed-point DSPs store and manipulate integers, while floating-point DSPs use a mantissa and exponent to represent rational numbers. Multiple factors determine whether fixed- or floating-point is the right choice for a particular application, including cost, development time, and performance.
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ARM + DSP makes an optimized SoC
The use of ARM CPUs is growing in Systems-on-Chip (SoC) platforms, as the generic ARM architecture lends well to a wide variety of systems and applications. However, while ARM processors are ideally suited for system management functions, they typically struggle with processing-intensive tasks such as imaging and advanced audio and voice communications. As the need for advanced signal processing continues to increase, application-specific Digital Signal Processors (DSPs) are now being integrated with ARM cores on the die of SoCs to offload demanding data processing from the CPU in order to optimize power consumption and performance.
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ARM Cortex-M4-based microcontrollers bring energy efficiency and high performance to intelligent applications
Many designers are on a quest to embed intelligence into even the most mundane objects as they try to equip smart homes with intelligent connected devices and sensor networks that link to the burgeoning Internet of Things (IoT). Other embedded designers focus on increasing the capabilities of already-intelligent consumer electronics products or on making portable versions of sophisticated sensing devices that require energy efficiency. Though these intelligent devices often need to run on battery power for a long time – sometimes for a period of years – many also require high performance due to their complexity.
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Implementing time-to-digital converters in size- and power-constrained sensor applications
Sensors need to convert physical values such as pressure, weight, distance, and length into a digital value. In the first step of such a conversion, the physical is converted into a temporary electrical analog value such as voltage or time.
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Hitting the wall in FPGA SoC verification
The ability to fix bugs by reprogramming has been a huge benefit for FPGA designers. Many have made do with little or no verification, preferring instead to debug the design in the bring-up lab. This method is breaking down in the era of FPGA SoCs with embedded processors. FPGA teams can greatly increase the quality of their verification by adopting a method used by many leading-edge ASIC and custom SoC developers: automatic generation of multithreaded, multiprocessor, self-verifying C test cases.
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Year of the FPGA ... Maybe?
For years FPGAs have been a workhorse of high-performance embedded DSP. The massively parallel nature of FPGAs is ideal for solving tough problems in the SWaP-limited embedded DSP domain. However, COTS board-level suppliers have struggled to integrate user-programmable FPGA-based products into their product portfolios and to make money from them. High component costs and long development times have meant that such products tend to be both expensive and have a very low return-on-investment for the COTS supplier. As a result, many smaller players remain small, and the larger players who have FPGA-based product lines have not seen the levels of sales or growth that more traditional single-board computers or DSP/multiprocessor boards have previously enjoyed.
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Protecting networked designs from intrusion with secure FPGAs
Flash-based FPGAs offering secure IP and hardware root of trust can be used to protect designs from invasive intrusion as devices become more connected in the Internet of Things and Machine-to-Machine applications.
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Transparency in critical embedded applications
The best-kept secrets in the critical and intelligent embedded computing industry involve knowing what technology is used in applications. With all the recent news about leaks at the NSA, I thought it was time that we broke the details on some key design wins that VITA technology suppliers have recorded in recent months.
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Multicore DSP enhances Synthetic Aperture Radar processing
Multicore DSPs allow power-efficient implementation of SAR processing tasks.
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Noise considerations in high-speed converter signal chains
Designing in high-speed analog signal chains can be somewhat challenging with all the noise sources to take into account. Whether it is high-speed (>10 MHz) or low-speed frequencies, the converter should really be viewed as a high-speed mixer and th...
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OpenVPX enables tightly coupled FPGA and CPU processing for unmanned EW platforms
OpenVPX brings together high-speed parallel processing FPGAs with the software capability of CPUs to meet the most challenging sensor processing applications for unmanned platforms.
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OpenVPX enables tightly coupled FPGA and CPU processing for unmanned EW platforms
OpenVPX brings together high-speed parallel processing FPGAs with the software capability of CPUs to meet the most challenging sensor processing applications for unmanned platforms.
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Top Innovators streamline embedded technology
Warren profiles the 2013 selections for Top Embedded Innovator, along with the rest of the June issue of Embedded Computing Design.
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EXPERT PANEL: Is EDA as easy as 1, 2, 3 these days?
No doubt about it. Today’s ever-shifting SoC, IC, PCB, and electronic systems design paradigm is burdened with challenges including: soaring development costs/complexity, product differentiation dilemmas thanks to more commercial IP usage, the pe...
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Optimizing performance, power, and area in processors to meet increasing demands
Mobile device, set-top box, base station, and server-class processors all need to increase performance, reduce power draw, reduce turnaround time, and reduce area to keep costs down. Previously, to optimize on-chip IP cores, SoC designers needed indivi...
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Rad-hard requirements increase as space market slows
Radiation immunity and signal processing requirements are increasing for spacecraft and satellite electronic systems as designers look to add more capability for government and civilian applications. Meanwhile, the U.S. military and commercial markets for space electronics remain flat, thanks to the slow global economy and government budget cuts.
John McHale, Editorial Director