Re: porting linux to DSP

David Olofson (audiality@swipnet.se)
Tue, 27 Jul 1999 04:47:16 +0200


Richard Yoo wrote:
>
> On 11:54 AM 7/26/99 , S . Arun shaped the electrons to say...
> When I say linux, I don't mean linux servers; just the basic kernel with
> its networking features. I am toying with this idea because a DSP chip is
> considerably cheaper than the present day pentium.
>
> I was always under the impression that Pentium processors, or even 486's
> were less expensive than DSP's... am I wrong?

When it comes to price/performance for small systems, yes. But nothing
beats the price/performance of a Celeron for DSP... Or an Alpha AXP, if
you need LOTS of power.

However, as some posts in the late audio/signal processing/real time
discussion pointed out, extremely low latency processing is very hard to
do without entirely locking a CPU to the job. In some cases, normal DSPs
may be a better solution sometimes.

Personally, I think DSPs belong in small, highly specialzed
applications, like portable systems, industrial environments and that
kind of things.

Note: It's not only the cost of the chip that matters! Take a closer
look at a GOOD DSP development system... and then look at the price
tag... Besides, developing code for a DSP is always more complicated
than hacking native code on a workstation, even if you have very good
tools.

> -Richard
> ______________________________________________________________________
> Richard Yoo Main: 210-892-4000
> Rackspace, Ltd Fax: 210-892-4329
> 112 East Pecan, Suite 600 Email: ryoo@rackspace.com
> San Antonio, TX 78205 <http://www.rackspace.com>
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//David

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