Software speeds programmable DSP designs

A new version of the DSP Builder development tool allows digital signal processing designers to take full advantage of Altera's new high-performance Stratix II and low-cost Cyclone II device families.

A new version of the DSP Builder development tool allows digital signal processing designers to take full advantage of Altera's new high-performance Stratix II and low-cost Cyclone II device families.

Supporting Altera's rich DSP MegaCore intellectual property portfolio, the new version also supports Matlab 7 and Simulink 6 software packages included in The MathWorks Release 14.

The new release of DSP Builder also includes a colour space convertor IP core and an edge detection reference design featuring a two-dimensional filter to help accelerate the development of video and image processing designs using Simulink.

"Adoption of Simulink for FPGA designs targeting DSP applications continues to accelerate", said Ken Karnofsky, Marketing Director for Signal Processing and Communications at The MathWorks.

"By extending their powerful DSP IP portfolio to DSP Builder, Altera has delivered a strong set of optimised FPGA libraries for filtering, transforms, and forward error correction".

"DSP Builder version 2.2 combined with Altera's feature-rich Stratix II DSP development kit provides an ideal platform for accelerating DSPs with FPGA coprocessors".

DSP designs implemented in Stratix II FPGAs can deliver 1.3us fast Fourier transform (FFT) performance - the industry's fastest - and over 300MHz finite impulse response (FIR) filtering performance.

In addition, the forward error correction requirements for the 802.16d broadband wireless standard can be implemented in the smallest Cyclone II device using the Viterbi and Reed-Solomon cores available with DSP Builder version 2.2, enabling low-cost wireless design for cost-sensitive markets.

"DSP Builder version 2.2 and our rich DSP IP portfolio help our customers optimise performance and reduce development time".

"At the same time, by fully supporting the low-cost Cyclone II family's embedded multipliers, DSP Builder version 2.2 provides an excellent development path for price-sensitive DSP applications", said Craig Lytle, Vice President of Altera's IP business unit.

DSP Builder allows engineers to shorten the DSP design cycle by creating the hardware representation of a DSP design in an algorithm-friendly environment.

DSP Builder version 2.2 can link with Altera's SOPC Builder tool to design custom FPGA coprocessors, which can easily connect to system processors, reducing development time.

The new Nios II embedded soft processor is also supported by DSP Builder version 2.2 through its link with the SOPC Builder development tool featured in the Quartus II software, which delivers the industry's lowest development costs for advanced system-on-a-programmable chip (SOPC) designs.

DSP Builder version 2.2 is available now to customers with a current DSP Builder subscription.

DSP Builder subscription pricing is $1995 and includes 12 months of software upgrades.

A one-year licence is included with Altera's new DSP Development Kit, Stratix II Edition.

A download of the DSP Builder tool is available for evaluation from the DSP solutions centre on the Altera website.

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