[sdiy] Proposed DSP board

[Neil Johnson]

Hi,

Interesting discussion.

> cheater cheater wrote:
> > 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

- please define 'reasonably priced'
- I think its dangerous to generalise about 'any' reasonably priced DSP.

> 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.

Its horses-for-courses really.  FPGA is good for parallelizable algorithms, and where the design is mostly fixed.  DSPs are good for serial algorithms, and where you want runtime tuning or updates.  And people find other interesting uses for both types of platform, sometimes having both FPGA and DSP in the same system.

> That said, there are some fun things going on in the FPGA world. :)

And in DSP land as well:

http://www.kyte.tv/ch/6118-scobleizer/308788-broadcoms-chip-for-future-cell-ph

Neil
--
http://www.njohnson.co.uk