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Programmable DSP Zooms In On Digital Camera Performance


By Mark Long -- e-inSITE, 10/24/2001


Texas Instruments (TI) has introduced a programmable DSP for digital camera applications that has been designed to enable faster operation at power consumption rates that are up to 25 percent lower than what TI's previous-generation DSP can achieve.

The new TMS320DSC25 programmable DSP platform has been designed to enable digital cameras to capture high-resolution still images well as enjoy real-time PC video from the same device. The DSC25 combines TI's low power TMS320C54x DSP with an ARM7TDMI RISC processor.

Manufactured using a 0.15-micron (SIA) CMOS process, the device supports the capture of still images at up to 3-megapixels in under one second, while encoding and decoding CIF resolution (352x288) MPEG-4 I+P video at 20 frames per second (fps). The device also features multiple power-down modes that have been designed to reduce power consumption and extend battery life. In addition, the enhanced DSP subsystem integrates a preview engine that enhances preview quality with faster memory access and image resizing, and an external host interface as well as SD, Multi-media Card (MMC) and Memory Stick interfaces.

The DSC25 includes a digital liquid crystal display (LCD) interface and S-video output. The enhanced on screen display (OSD) also reportedly provides a more flexible, simplified graphical user interface (GUI) development for system designers with dedicated video, bitmap and cursor windows. Direct memory access (DMA) to external dynamic random access memory (DRAM) is also on tap, together with an external host interface for enhancing PC-related applications.

TI intends to offer software modules for JPEG, motion-JPEG, MPEG, MPEG-4, H.263, as well as audio standards such as MP3 and Advanced Audio Coding (AAC). Data communication standards such as USB and RS-232 will also be supported.

Sampling right now, TI's DSC25 DSP is scheduled to reach volume production in the Spring of 2002 at a price of less than $20 each in 100K quantities.