ADSP-21368 SHARC Processor Hardware Reference 1-1
1 INTRODUCTION
The ADSP-21367/8/9 and ADSP-2137x SHARC processors are high per-
formance, 32-bit processors used for high quality audio, medical imaging,
communications, military, test equipment, 3D graphics, speech recogni-
tion, motor control, imaging, and other applications. By adding on-chip
SRAM, integrated I/O peripherals, and an additional processing element
for single-instruction, multiple-data (SIMD) support, this processor
builds on the ADSP-21000 family DSP core to form a complete
system-on-a-chip.
Design Advantages
A digital signal processor’s data format determines its ability to handle sig-
nals of differing precision, dynamic range, and signal-to-noise ratios.
Because floating-point DSP math reduces the need for scaling and the
probability of overflow, using a floating-point processor can simplify algo-
rithm and software development. The extent to which this is true depends
on the floating-point processor’s architecture. Consistency with IEEE
workstation simulations and the elimination of scaling are clearly two
ease-of-use advantages. High level language programmability, large
address spaces, and wide dynamic range allow system development time to
be spent on algorithms and signal processing concerns, rather than assem-
bly language coding, code paging, and/or error handling. The processors
are highly integrated, 32-bit floating-point processors which provide all of
these design advantages.
The SHARC processor architecture balances a high performance processor
core with high performance program memory (PM), data memory (DM),