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Product category: Design and Development Software
News Release from: Texas Instruments (April 2001-March 2006) | Subject: DSP Analysis Toolkit
Edited by the Electronicstalk Editorial Team on 12 February 2003

Toolkit gets to the root of DSP designs

Enabling developers to run complex DSP simulations in minutes instead of hours, Texas Instruments claims to have developed the fastest DSP simulation technology available in the market

With increased simulation speeds of up to 21 times faster than previous offerings, developers can simulate data in only minutes compared to hours using competing DSP simulators. Along with its new simulation technology, TI has released an Analysis Toolkit for its TMS320C5000 and TMS320C6000 DSP platforms that enables developers increased application visibility and the opportunity to profile and model full DSP applications.

Developers need DSP simulators because they allow the architecture of complex multicore systems to be realised early in the design process, typically months before hardware is available.

Simulators make it possible to evaluate various design configurations without the need for prototype devices, however the slowness of previous simulators prevented them from being used extensively.

Also, data collection tools of the past did not give developers the visibility they needed to identify problems or bugs within their code.

Studies have demonstrated that bugs and bottlenecks found late in the design cycle are harder and more expensive to isolate and fix and can be the reason for a product missing a critical market window.

Now with fast simulators and with TI's new Analysis Toolkit, developers can use DSP simulators earlier in the design cycle to achieve the following benefits: full system-level modelling, making the transition to hardware much easier; code optimisation early on to achieve maximum system performance; and deeper visibility both in software and hardware to catch and fix costly bugs in the early stages of the development cycle, eliminating wasted weeks or months.

'The potential benefits of DSP simulation have been known for a long time, but because simulators have been slow and difficult to use most developers never adopted them', said Paul Zorfass, Senior Analyst with IDC/FTI.

'TI's new simulation tools make DSP simulation more usable and practical, not just because of simulation speed, but because they accumulate and display more critical data and present it in a very usable manner.

It is very likely that these tools have the potential to significantly improve the design process'.

As a key component of TI's Code Composer Studio (CCStudio) integrated development environment (IDE), the Analysis Toolkit makes it possible to exploit the benefits of simulation in every phase of the design process and gain unprecedented levels of visibility before and after hardware availability.

TI is the first DSP provider to combine these analysis tools into one kit eliminating the need for the developers to shop multiple vendors.

The Analysis Toolkit includes four new powerful components: an on-chip cache memory conflict analyser, a pipeline stall analyser, a code coverage analyser and a multi-event function profiler.

Each one is designed to help develop and optimise applications by providing extensive visibility into on-chip memory, application behaviour and use of system resources.

A cache analyser provides a graphical depiction of cache accesses, highlighting cache hit and miss patterns over time.

While it has been possible to collect cache-miss data, there has never been a way to quickly identify the root cause of the cache misses.

The cache analysis tool within the analysis toolkit automatically gathers this cache-miss data and clearly identifies its source, so that the developer can isolate and identify patterns to better organise the code to optimise performance.

A pipeline stall analyser rapidly identifies stalls in the pipeline down to the instruction level and presents the information on a single screen that the designer can use to reorder the instruction to eliminate the conflict.

This tool makes this process so simple that even designers without extensive DSP development expertise can optimise a DSP's pipeline structure to maximise performance.

The code coverage analyser automatically finds the conditional statements in the code, tracks the path taken through it and provides results in an easy-to-read graphical format in a single display.

The analyser leaves no code untested, and makes it possible to have confidence in code coverage based on actual data taken by a highly accurate and repeatable process for the first time.

A multi-event function profiler allows the user to collect data on multiple events and presents it in a single table, saving the developer valuable time from having to analyse each event separately.

They can also see how changes made to one event affects all other events, allowing them to determine how steps taken to improve performance in one operational area impact others as well.

Fast simulators and the Analysis Toolkit are available on selected processors within the C5000 and C6000 DSP platforms.

The Analysis Toolkit is available free with CCStudio 2.2 for all registered users.

CCStudio, with the first year annual subscription, is available today for $3595 or through a free 90-day evaluation version.

(This was Electronicstalk's Top Story on 11 February 2003)

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