Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
immunochip can be implemented as a small standalone electronic board. A PC or PC
compatible mobile computer (Notebook) can be used as a host workstation for user-
friendly visualization of the results of processing, for debugging of algorithms, etc.
DSP provides, essentially, the application of mathematical operations to a series of
digital samples representing physical world signals such as audio waves, or complex
radar or sensor samples. DSP technology is nowadays common place in devices such
as mobile phones, multimedia computers, video recorders, CD players, hard disc drive
controllers and modems, and will soon replace analog circuitry in commercial TV sets
and telephones. An important application of DSP is also in signal compression and
decompression as well as encryption in the field of ISA [10].
The architecture of DSP allows overcome main drawbacks of general-purpose
microprocessors. The program bus and the data bus are separate from each other, as
are the program and data memories. These parallel buses allow instruction and data to
be fetched at the same time. This separation of data and program busses characterizes
the so-called Harvard architecture.
Analog Devices has introduced so-called super Harvard architecture (SHARC).
The TigerSHARC 128-bit DSP is a high performance next generation version of
SHARC. The TigerSHARC combines multiple computation units for floating-point
and fixed-point processing.
Typically, real-time DSP systems require fast, deterministic input/output (I/O) and
number crunching capability. Applications may range from basic processing of a
small image with a single channel of incoming data (e.g. filtering or averaging) to a
sonar system with hundreds of incoming data channels and a massive parallel
processing requirement. The TigerSHARC has been designed to operate in the
demanding world of telecommunications, but facilities that make it equally suitable
for a wide range of applications, including aerial and maritime equipment (radar,
avionics, sonar, etc.) and professional audio (mixers, digital effects, etc.).
Apparently, the TigerSHARC is the most effective fixed/floating-point device to
date. The TigerSHARC is well suited to high-speed, low-power applications,
involving large numbers of calculation and data I/O. The built-in link ports can
transfer data between processors and provide fast interfaces to external hardware,
yielding true system flexibility. Similarly, the dual compute blocks can handle mixed
floating-point and fixed-point algorithms simultaneously, leading to very efficient and
simplified software implementation. Overall, high-performance processing coupled
with low power consumption (<1.5W) make the TigerSHARC DSP unbeatable for
many applications. Since DSP algorithms permit a very high degree of parallelism,
DSP chips can be used for super-computing with strong requirements like high
performance and flexibility at very low power dissipation.
On the other hand, one of the main concerns when moving to a new chip is the
effort involved in porting existing code to the new device. This can have a larger
effect on the timescale of a project than the new hardware design, especially when
software engineers have to learn a new development environment and a new assembly
language. The TigerSHARC addresses both of these issues by keeping the same
Visual DSP++ environment for all its processor families and maintaining a similar
style of algebraic assembly programming.
Therefore, the choice of TigerSHARC architecture as a basis for the hardware
implementation of the immunochip is caused by the following main reasons: 1) the
