TI's new software gets developers one step closer to tapping the full potential of TI multicore DSPs

DALLAS, USA: Facilitating rapid and easier development with its multicore devices, Texas Instruments Inc. (TI) announced several software updates for its multicore digital signal processors (DSPs), including the new TMS320C66x DSP generation.

TI's software offerings consist of a new multicore software development kit (MCSDK), optimized multicore software libraries, Linux kernel support for the C66x DSP generation, and support for the OpenMP Application Program Interface (API). With these free, optimized software offerings, developers can benefit from faster development on TI's KeyStone multicore architecture and can take full advantage of their multicore designs.

"Our goal has always been to provide developers with simple, powerful options for development that makes multicore programming easier," said Brian Glinsman, general manager, communications infrastructure business, Texas Instruments. "Simply put, software plays a key role in achieving optimal performance in the design process, and TI's software offerings provide unique features and benefits for multicore developers, allowing them to start their designs on TI's multicore platform today."
MCSDK

TI's MCSDK provides developers with a well integrated software development platform encompassing efficient multicore communication layers for intercore and interchip communication, validated and optimized drivers integrated with SYS/BIOS, a real time operating system (RTOS), and Linux support with appropriate demonstration examples.

With such an integrated approach, developers are free to select suitable software for their needs, significantly reducing development time. Developers can also use the same MCSDK for TI's C66x and TMS320C64x+ high performance multicore DSPs enabling software reuse and greater return on investment for the development effort.
Linux support

Continuing to offer support for TI's multicore devices, Linux kernel support is now available for the C66x DSP architecture. As developers move towards open source as a key element of their products, application developers can benefit from the availability of Linux on TI's C66x DSPs by having less software to develop, and focusing more on differentiating features and software in their applications.

In addition to supporting the C66x DSPs, which includes the TMS320C6670, TMS320C6671, TMS320C6672, TMS320C6674 and TMS320C6678 devices, as well as the TMS320TCI6618 SoC, Linux kernel support is already available on TI's C64x+ DSPs.

Optimized libraries
TI offers optimized DSP libraries (DSPLIB) and image processing libraries (IMGLIB) for its C66x DSP instruction set architecture. TI's C66x DSP instruction set architecture is the industry's first to support native fixed- and floating-point operations. Within the year, TI plans to add new enhancements to the DSPLIB and IMGLIB with additional kernels as well as provide optimized libraries for vision analysis, cryptography, voice and fax.

These libraries implement commonly used optimized kernels providing significant processing advantage for a variety of high-performance applications including mission critical, test and imaging, image analytics and vision analytics.

OpenMP API
TI plans to add support for OpenMP APIs to its optimized C66x compiler and runtime software for the KeyStone multicore architecture. The C66x DSPs are the first multicore devices to support the OpenMP API. The OpenMP API is a portable, scalable model that provides developers utilizing TI's multicore DSPs a simple and flexible interface for developing parallel applications in the mission critical industry, including public safety and defense, medical and high-end imaging, test and automation and high-performance computing.

"TI's KeyStone multicore architecture has an enviable footprint in high-performance multicore applications," said Larry Meadows, CEO of the OpenMP ARB. "TI's support of the OpenMP API is an important win for developers in the embedded processing space and showcases the importance of the OpenMP API at all levels of computing, from embedded systems to supercomputers. We are very pleased to have TI's support and look forward to working with them in the future."

Software updates are available from TI for free download today. Additionally, all software updates are available on TI's low cost evaluation modules (EVM), the TMDXEVM6670L and TMDXEVM6678L. Both EVMs include a free MCSDK, Code Composer Studio (CCS) integrated development environment (IDE) and suite of application/demo codes to allow programmers to quickly come up to speed on the new C66x DSPs.