[sdiy] Proposed DSP board

[cheater cheater]

Eric,
I'm just saying:
why not enter a platform that allows much much more power? :)

Pricing: once you realize a dsp costs around 200 usd to deploy, you'll
find it's cheaper to buy a pc, the development is easier, the
processing power is similar, and you get the onboard codec. Of course,
a thru-hole DSP is much cheaper to make boards for and solder, but
16-bit dsp is very quirky and usually doesn't sound too good. And if
you try emulating 32 or 64 bit dsp, you'll lower your resources even
further. The cost is further weighted out by the extra effort
necessary to code for that.

400-500 usd and you get a hp mininote, which is a fanless minilaptop
and has a super-high-resolution display. Perfect for dsp, and
rackmountable if you own rack ears and glue.

my 2c ;)

>> 2. a dsPIC is very inefficient. You won't be able to do much with it;
>> or with any reasonably priced dsp chip for that matter
>
> [citation needed]

You're right, I'm exaggerating, I got caught red-handed :)

arm->avr: sorry, stupid mistake :)

I'll opt out for today before the Portal of Untruth fully opens and
starts spewing its transgressions. ;-)

D.

On Thu, Jan 22, 2009 at 3:04 PM, Eric Brombaugh <ebrombaugh1 at cox.net> wrote:
> cheater cheater wrote:
>>
>> 1. if you use an AVR you'll be able to use the new uCApps MIOS. This
>> is a complete system which solves almost everything you need in a
>> synth as far as janitorial work goes. They're moving away from PIC for
>> the exact purpose of getting more power. It's all coded in C so you
>> and others can use it so much more easily
>
> As Samppa noted, the MIDIbox community is now using the STM32 ARM processor
> these days, not the AVR. ARMs are nice, writing in C is nice.
>
>> 2. a dsPIC is very inefficient. You won't be able to do much with it;
>> or with any reasonably priced dsp chip for that matter
>
> [citation needed]
>
>> the movement
>> as I understand it (and as I was told by people smarter than me :) )
>> is away from classical dsp's since they have a very limited number of
>> multiplication units; for hardware, your best bet is an FPGA now,
>> which allows you to do umpteens of multiplications in one cycle. I
>> don't remember the exact numbers for FPGA, but even the comparison
>> with a core 2 duo was staggering.
>
> While it's true that FPGAs can do a lot more operations in parallel than
> most DSPs available now, that hardly puts them in the dustbin. If you code
> your algorithms carefully and set your expectations right then you can do
> some very useful things with low-end DSPs like the dsPIC.
>
> That said, there are some fun things going on in the FPGA world. :)
>
> Eric
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