ADI goes low-power, low-cost with Blackfin

EDN Europe, 27 Oct 2008

The newest members of Analog Devices’ Blackfin DSP range are in the 51x series, and extend the overall product family in the directions of lowest power and lowest cost. They continue to follow the approach of the rest of the Blackfin chips, in that they are “convergent” parts that provide for both signal processing (DSP) and control functions in a single core. You might use BF51x parts if you are currently using a 32-bit microcontroller and require more signal-processing capability, ADI says; you will get approximately 400 MIPS at a $5 (approximately) volume price point. Example applications might lie in industrial designs, portable media devices or voice-over-IP. For the latter, you can opt for a device with the “GIPS” encoding engine, which is, as ADI notes, the same approach that Skype employs. The chips will run at clock speeds up to 400 MHz, and feature 8.5 mega-multiply-accumulate (MMAC)/mW power performance. They have interfaces to attach consumer media formats such as SDIO; and Ethernet with compliance to the IEEE-1588 standard. This permits near-real-time operation over Ethernet for industrial systems, with precise time synchronisation in the 50-100 nsec range. Also for industrial designs, there is a PWM output to generate motor control waveforms. With standby-power levels under 1 mW, ADI presents the 51x variants of Blackfin as being especially suited to always-on applications