ADI unveils power efficient, multicore SHARC+ARM SoCs

Analog Devices Inc. (ADI) has announced eight SHARC processors as part of a high-performance, power-efficient, real-time series that boasts peak performance greater than 24 giga-floating-point operations per second using two enhanced SHARC+ cores and advanced DSP accelerators (FFT, FIR, IIR).

The ADSP-SC58x and ADSP-2158x series consume less than 2W at high temperature, making the processor line-up more than five times more power efficient than previous SHARC products and more than two times more efficient than the nearest competitive processors, according to ADI. This advantage provides industry leading digital signal processing performance for applications where thermal management sets the limit for power consumption, or where the higher costs and lower reliability of fans cannot be tolerated.

Applications include automotive, consumer and professional audio, multi-axis motor control and energy distribution systems. The ADSP-SC58x products complement the SHARC+ cores and DSP accelerators with the addition of an ARM Cortex-A5 processor, with FPU and Neon DSP extensions to handle additional real-time processing tasks and manage peripherals used to interface to time-critical data in audio, industrial closed-loop control and industrial sensing applications. These interfaces include Gigabit Ethernet (with AVB and IEEE-1588 support), USB High-Speed, mobile storage (including SD/SDIO), PCI Express and a rich variety of other connectivity options for a flexible and simplified system design.

The ADSP-2158x family, without the ARM Cortex-A5 core, is geared for applications where a DSP co-processor is typically needed and includes the two SHARC+ cores and DSP accelerators with a peripheral set matched to the cores.

With software IP protection a growing industry security concern, ARM TrustZone security and an on-board crypto hardware accelerators are included. For applications where reliability is a critical requirement, memory parity and error-correction hardware provide higher data integrity.

Product samples are available along with the full set of development tools. Options include one or two SHARC+ cores, with or without the ARM Cortex-A5 core, various peripheral configurations and two 19mm x 19mm BGA package alternatives.

Rapid development EZ-Kit evaluation boards are available at www.analog.com/SC58xEZKIT.

- Julien Happich
  EE Times Europe