Texas Instruments has developed three new devices that transcend traditional floating-point processors, enabling engineers to easily design more portable, connected, cost-efficient and high-precision end products for medical applications.

The three new devices, based on TI's new C674x DSP core, merge the inherent advantages of floating point with a combination of connectivity peripherals, low power and low cost that, until now, has only been available with fixed-point devices. Giving developers the flexible solutions they need to design both basic and advanced product lines, TI's new processors include the industry's lowest power floating-point DSPs - the TMS320C6745 DSP and TMS320C6747 DSP - as well as the OMAP-L137 floating-point-DSP-plus-ARM applications processor.

"For applications like audio and medical, the high precision and wide dynamic range provided by floating point have always been paramount because end users demand fidelity and data accuracy," said Corey Chao, low power processors marketing manager, TI. "In recent years, consumers have also begun to require more portability and connectivity. In response to that demand, developers have asked TI for new low-power, floating-point processors with a wealth of integrated peripherals, so that is exactly what we are providing."

TI's new C6745 DSP, C6747 DSP and OMAP-L137 applications processor include USB 2.0/1.1, 10/100 Ethernet and multimedia card/secure digital (MMC/SD) peripherals to ensure that developers can easily add connectivity options to their designs. Traditionally, these peripherals have only been available on fixed-point devices or via separate components but are needed for a broad range of applications that require connectivity for high data transfer or networking/Internet access. In addition to connectivity components, TI's new processors offer varying levels of other on-chip options that provide developers with system performance and prices to best fit their application. With the on-chip integration of TI's new processors, engineers can eliminate the significant investment in development time and cost associated with adding multiple external components.

The new C6745 DSP, which runs at up to 300 MHz, includes an extensive set of serial ports for system control as well as multichannel audio serial ports (McASP) with up to 16 serializers and FIFO buffers. It also includes two external memory interfaces: an 8-bit external asynchronous memory interface (EMIFA) for NAND/NOR flash and a higher speed 16-bit synchronous external memory interface (EMIFB) for SDRAM.

For increased system performance, the C6747 DSP includes all of the features of the C6745 DSP and incorporates an additional 128 KB of on-chip RAM. The EMIFA and EMIFB on the C6747 are also upgraded to 16-bit and 32-bit, respectively. An LCD controller is on-chip, allowing designers to quickly add quarter video graphics array (QVGA) or other displays to their end products.