Advantech announces TMS320C66x™ DSP-based boards in multiple form factors

Advantech Embedded Design-In Forum, Munich, Germany, Nov 9th 2010: Advantech builds upon the success of its first generation digital signal processor (DSP) products by introducing two new designs based on TMS320C66x digital signal processors (DSPs) generation which Texas Instruments Incorporated (TI) announced today.

Advantech affirmed that the new devices will allow it to address a wider industry demand beyond the communications-related video conferencing, broadcasting and telepresence applications which it already serves with DSP designs. Two PCI Express cards based on the 8-core TMS320C6678 are at the center of today’s announcement; a half length card supporting four DSPs and a full length card supporting eight DSPs. Both cards have been conceived for rapid deployment in Advantech’s industrial PC, embedded, and commercial server-based solutions, enabling OEMs to develop new products for public security, healthcare, transportation and signage markets. The cards, when coupled with a general purpose platform, add image processing performance for compression and decompression, image analysis, filtering and format conversion.

By supplying integrated application ready platforms, Advantech’s vertical market groups will be able to deliver a broader range of solutions for video-surveillance, medical and 3D/4D imaging, bioinformatics, radar, sonar and instrumentation -- all of which will benefit from the performance of the integrated fixed/floating point unit. The TMS320C6678 is the highest-performance generation in the TMS320C6000™ DSP platform, capable of 160 GFLOPs and 320 GMACs.

“Advantech is proceeding with its next wave of DSP products built on TI’s new C6678 device based on 40nm process technology and with up to 8.0 GHz of raw DSP processing power,” said Franz Wei, Vice President for Advantech. “In addition to our communications customers building IP border gateways, video server and video and voice recognition applications, OEMs from our industrial customer base are eager to integrate the new processor to respond to the increasing demand for advanced video and imaging technology.”

Advantech’s recently formed Embedded Media and Smart Technology Group, a part of its Design and Manufacturing Services organization, is designing both standard and fully customized DSP solutions based on the AdvancedTCA, AdvancedMC, and PCI Express Card open industry specifications. Technology re-use across multiple form factors gives OEMs wider product choices, enabling integration into the systems enclosures which best suit the end-application, and providing improved scalability options.

“With our new C66x multicore DSPs, we continue to push the boundaries on high performance, low-power and flexible silicon platforms,” said Ramesh Kumar, multicore and media infrastructure business manager for TI. “Thanks to Advantech’s sustained investment in innovative DSP blade designs coupled with software from TI and our developer network, OEMs can lower development time and cost.”

Software support for the boards will be available from TI and Advantech’s Ecosystem Alliance software partner ENEA. ENEA provides a comprehensive suite of optimized multicore support for TI DSPs, including their ENEA OSEck® RTOS, the ENEA LINX® scalable and reliable messaging layer, plus the ENEA dSPEED® data plane management framework, as well as other runtime and development tools with support for TMS320C66x devices .

Both products are expected to be ready for customer sampling before the end of the first quarter, 2011.

About the Texas Instruments Developer Network
Advantech is a member of the TI Developer Network, a community of respected, well-established companies offering products and services based on TI analog and digital technology. The Network provides a broad range of end-equipment solutions, embedded software, engineering services and development tools that help customers accelerate innovation to make the world smarter, healthier, safer, greener and more fun. www.ti.com/dspdevnetwork

About Advantech
Founded in 1983, Advantech is a leader in providing trusted, innovative products, services, and solutions. Advantech offers comprehensive system integration, hardware, software, customer-centric design services, embedded systems, automation products, and global logistics support. We cooperate closely with our partners to help provide complete solutions for a wide array of applications across a diverse range of industries. Our mission is to enable an intelligent planet with Automation and Embedded Computing products and solutions that empower the development of smarter working and living. With Advantech, there is no limit to the applications and innovations our products make possible. (Corporate Website: www.advantech.com). For Telecom and Networking markets, Advantech provides mission-critical hardware to the leading telecom and networking equipment manufacturers. Advantech’s standard and customized products are embedded in OEM equipment that the world's communications infrastructure depends upon. Website: www.advantech.com/NC

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This release was published on openPR.