Look for DSP tags to fall despite growing demand
Staff -- Purchasing, 3/18/2004 2:00:00 AM
The digital signal processor (DSP) market is expected to grow 20% to $8.5 billion in 2004 driven mainly by wireless equipment. Consumer electronics equipment and a variety of new emerging applications will also boost the DSP market.
Wireless communications equipment, especially cell phones and cell phone infrastructure equipment, is the single biggest user of DSPs. The segment consumes 70% of all DSPs. "Every cell phone handset contains a DSP," says Brian Matas, an analyst with IC Insights. "Cellular base stations use DSP chips to switch and route signals."
Demand for DSPs by the cell phone industry will increase in the next five years as cell phone technology and infrastructure evolves, requiring higher performance DSPs. New higher functioning 2.5G (generation) and 3G phones will have transmission speeds at least five times greater than 2G phones and will require higher processing power. Besides cell phones, digital subscriber lines (DSL) will be a strong market for DSPs.
While DSPs will be mostly used in communications equipment, they will also be designed into new leading-edge devices like voice recognition systems and hearing aides that eliminate background noise and translate foreign languages. Low cost global positioning systems (GPS), health monitoring equipment, Internet audio devices, active suspension systems in cars, and digital cameras will also use DSPs in greater numbers.
Volatile prices
While demand for DSPs will grow, buyers can expect prices to fall overall by the end of the year. However, tags will be volatile. Prices will likely fall in the second quarter, rise in the third and then decline again in the fourth quarter. For the year, the average price will fall from about $5.97 at the beginning of the year to $5.69 at year end, according to IC Insights. The good news for buyers is that downward price pressure will likely continue for years.
The price drops have also been good news for DSP manufacturers. Falling tags resulted in more DSPs being used in more equipment.
Texas Instruments (TI), which is the market leader in DSP, will benefit the most from growing DSP demand. The chipmaker has a broad offering of DSPs for virtually every application from simple toys to high-end workstations and government computers, which use DSPs for complex modeling for imaging, space exploration, and weather forecasts.
TI dominates the cell phone handset market. Its DSPs are in 60% of cell phones. TI's DSPs run the wireless gamut. TI supplies TCS2200 and TCS2100 for voice centric global system for mobile (GSM) communications, and general packet radio services ( GPRS ) handsets. The TCS2600 is designed for multimedia applications and the TCS4105 is used in higher performance multimedia personal digital assistants.
Analog Devices, the second largest DSP manufacturer makes four DSP families including Blackfin, which combines higher performance signal processing with efficient control processing capabilities.
While TI supplies many of the DSPs used in cell phone handsets, Agere is the leader for DSPs used in cell phone base stations. It's 16000 DSP series is deployed inhalf the world's base stations, according to Mike Elser, senior marketing manager for Agere's DSP businesss.
The 16000 DSPs are higher-end chips. While the average price for a DSP is between $5-$6, DSPs used in base stations cost more than $60.
Elser says demand for DSPs by cell base station manufacturers has been strong as new 2.5G and 3.0G networks come on line.
The newer generation networks require DSPs that enable faster, higher transmission rates. For instance, the wide band code division multiple access ( CDMA ) standard enables two megabits per second single use. New high speed data packet access ( HSDPA ) standard gets the transmission rate to 10, 15 maybe 20 megabits per second and can be shared among users. DSPs enable that performance, says Elser.
More integration
To achieve even higher transmission rates, DSP will have more functionality by using math coprocessors and on-board SRAM memory.
"Our strategy for 3G has been system on a chip (SoC)," says Elser. "We believe to meet these next generation requirements we need SoC devices that have a traditional DSP functionality but also have coprocessors and some hard-wired accelerators to meet the performance needs of next generation features."
Elser says additional functionality is needed for higher speed. "If you need to go off chip for a program or data access, that creates a bottleneck. One of our strengths is having a multicore DSP design and having on chip memory close to these cores," he says.
Great functionality on DSP chips is not just a trend for high-end DSPs used for base stations. Motorola combines DSPs with microcontrollers on motor control applications.
Motorola's DSPs are actually hybrids of DSPs and microcontrollers. "The architecture of the chip is a DSP, but it has microcontroller capabilities," says Scott Lynch, operations manager, hybrid control operations for Motorola. "It is a differentiator for us."
Increased functionality at a lower cost is resulting in more DSPs being used in more types of equipment. An example of this is power steering in cars. DSPs will be used in new electronic power assisted steering systems. "Power steering has relied on hydraulics, but will switch to electric motors in several years and DSPs will be used to control the motors," says Lynch. Motorola's 56F8300 family is targeted at those applications, he says.
In power steering, the DSP would handle computations involved in turning the wheel, how much the wheel is turning, and how quickly. "It translates that information into electrical signals for the motors involved in control. Those are heavy duty mathematical calculations," says Lynch. The microcontroller would handle the communications protocol between sensors and the motors controlling steering. "Automakers will use DSPs in steering because they can increase reliability and decrease the weight of the car by getting rid of all the hydraulic fluids and eventually the steering column which is made up of a lot of metals," says Lynch. "The weight of the car will be reduced and fuel efficiency will be improved."
Cost will be reduced because maintenance of the car for hydraulics is higher than electric motors. "Overall system cost will be reduced when you can eliminate pieces of assembly—all the connections and so forth," he says.
The use of DSPs in motor controls for cars and other equipment is relatively new. "Digital processing is math intensive," says Lynch. "The processor that used to handle the math was limited and so was performance. In the last 10 years, performance has improved as the math computation capability of DSPs has gone up dramatically. At the same time, cost has gone down, so more products can take advantage of signal processing," he says.
As a result, products with motors ranging from electric tooth brushes to industrial controls are using DSPs. Motorola's 56F800 DSPs are used for motor control and range in price from $2.50 to $5.00.
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