ADI makes it easier for startups to get started with Blackfin

4/5/2006 11:09 PM EDT

Life is great when you're a Big Guy. Just pick up the phone, and the world is your oyster. But as we've noted in this space previously, smaller companies can sometimes feel lost trying to get info and help developing their video designs. Here at the Embedded Systems Conference in San Jose, Analog Devices introduced a new on-line learning and development web site for their Blackfin processors that promises to make it easier for the little guy.

I sat through a quick demo of one of the free training modules for the 7183B Blackfin processor, explaining how to bring video into the processor (utilizing two frame buffers so that data is always ready), encode the video, and then output the video signal to external devices.

It was just one of several dozen interactive training modules that ADI says it will be creating, at www.analog.com/bold. These are lecture style video tutorials accompanied by code examples, a transcript of the lecture, and the slide presentation. (The one I saw a demo of was actually still in production, and will up in about two weeks.)

ADI also has on display numerous examples of portable media players (one called "epod"), and a pocket size intelligent video camera that automatically locates golf balls. All from small companies.

It never ceases to amaze me, in an era of global business and technology conglomeration, how much the "small guy" still counts, and that's certainly the case here at ESC.