Motors & Drives Information

Mountain View, Calif.--1997 will be the year in which digital signal processors (DSPs) push microcontrollers and other discrete devices into the background as the semiconductor platform of choice for emerging and traditional embedded markets--including motor control applications and disk drives, according to industry observers involved in both segments.

As the pace of integration of peripherals onto DSPs picks up steam, DSPs will play a vital role in combination wireless devices, digital versatile disc (DVD) and set-top box markets as well as in the development of the Internet.

In addition, where once DSPs were confined almost exclusively to the telecommunications and wireless markets, in 1997 there will be no limits. DSPs will be integrated into systems that were once reserved almost exclusively for microcontrollers including automotive applications, vending machines, electric meters, washing machines, refrigerators, dishwashers, disk drives and many other consumer products that demand fast time-to-market with digital functionality--areas where DSPs in the past have had limited or no presence at all.

"DSPs are going to be in everything. They are becoming the new microcontroller," asserted Edgar A. Sack, chairman and CEO for Zilog. For several years, Mr. Sack has been predicting that DSPs will be the platform of choice for a host of emerging systems applications--an interesting stance for the leader of the company that, although heavily involved in DSPs today, also invented the ubiquitous Z8 microcontroller architecture.

"When we think back and see 8-bit microcontrollers in everything, I see the same thing happening for DSPs. Five years ago when it was talked about to engineers, they were scared of the technology. Now they shrug their shoulders and go right to the design. I really think it is going to be the (key) part of 1,000 applications."

Mr. Sack said he sees DSPs in WebTVs, web browsers for TVs, bit-map graphics, process video and audio as well as appliances. The automotive and wave table markets--normally areas heavily dominated by microcontrollers--will be areas where DSPs will proliferate in 1997.

"I would imagine we will see more architectures for the DSP than we do in the microcontroller industry," commented Mr. Sack. "I don't see every DSP vendor using the same standard DSP for every function. It will be more of a horses-for-courses kind of a thing."

# posted by Medical Information : 3:00 AM