The retail delivery of music is on the verge of revolution. The Internet is the delivery vehicle, and DSP is the driver. Recording executives are apoplectic as they try to determine whether Internet-download audio is a ripoff or an opportunity. The scramble is on to find an electronic means of copyright protection.
If the music industry is in a state of war with the MP3 Internet portals, the DSP chip suppliers are the conflict's arms merchants. DSP gets into the act at the beginning, as a means of compressing stereo music according to MPEG-1 audio level 3 (MP3). The encoding DSP algorithms are usually executed on PC host processors. On the portable player end, another DSP algorithm decodes the compressed stream.
Since the world is not ready for a Windows2000-based Pentium III in a handheld player, traditional DSP chips are the natural choice. Or are they?
The original Diamond Rio player's DSP engine was the Micronas Semiconductor MAS 3507D "audio signal processor." But as a non-programmable DSP, the 3507D is not classified as a DSP by the World Semiconductor Trade Statistics metric.
Many believe that MP3's days are numbered and that more computationally intensive DSP compression algorithms such as AAC, EPAC, MLP or ATRAC3 — coupled with encryption and/or watermarking — will eventually replace it. Consequently, players will require more DSP horsepower.
RCA's Lyra player paired a Texas Instruments TMS320C2000 programmable DSP with a traditional 16-bit microcontroller. The Lyra can handle a variety of decoding algorithms, and new ones can be downloaded to it. Clearly, others must provide such a capability if they are to prevent product obsolescence.
To make a more competitive product at a lower price point, Cirrus Logic introduced the Maverick system-on-chip, based on an ARM7 variant that's not categorized as a DSP, either.
Other DSP engines serving the market are STMicroelectronics' STA013 MP3 decoder, based on a VLIW platform; the new Micronas MAS 3509F, with integrated codec; Samsung's CalmRISC; and Toshiba's TC9446F decoder. None of those Internet audio decoders is classified as a DSP, because none is programmable by the OEM purchaser.
The upshot? The market for DSP-capable chips is far bigger than is reported.
Will Strauss is president of Forward Concepts and is considered the leading authority on markets driven by DSP technology. He may be contacted at wis@fwdconcepts.com.
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