Texas Instruments has developed a novel high performance multi-core multiple digital signal processors (DSP) which can be embedded into the medical imaging equipment. The integrated DSP can achieve significant cost, power and board space savings.

The new device, C6474, provides significant system integration for customers currently utilizing DSP farms for medical imaging equipment.

The C6474 achieves system integration due in part to a process shrink to 65nm feature size, which means the C6474 can be packaged in a 23 mm x 23 mm ball grid array (BGA) and is comparable in size to TI's existing single core DSP solutions fabricated in 90 nm technology.

Customers can also reap a considerable cost savings with solutions utilizing the C6474 because it is comparably priced to the C6455, but it delivers three times the raw DSP processing performance.

The C6474 integrates both Viterbi and Turbo accelerators to maximize processing efficiency of these frequently used algorithms. Additionally, the processor includes several serializer/deserializer (SERDES) interfaces, such as an SGMII Ethernet MAC (EMAC), an Antenna Interface (AIF) and Serial RapidIO (SRIO). The peripherals and processor cores are complemented by 32 kB of both L1 programme and L1 data memory per core, 3 MB of total L2 memory available in two configurations (a 1 MB/core or a 1.5 MB / 1 MB / 0.5 MB configuration), as well as TI's fastest DDR2 memory interface running at 667 MHz.

Simplifying design and speeding time-to-market, TI offers a complete signal chain solution, including power management, data converters, amplifiers, clocks and RF solutions.

A software debug platform is also available to assist customers developing on the C6474. The C6474 evaluation module (EVM) includes two C6474 processors, a high-speed DSP interconnect enabled by EMAC, AIF and SRIO SERDES interfaces, and design files such as Orcad and Gerber. The C6474 EVM also comes with an onboard JTAG header with a XDS560 emulator, as well as a board specific Code Composer Studio (CCStudio) Integrated Development Environment (IDE). The TMDXEVM6474 is available for US $1995.