Everybody knows that Intel is moving headlong into DSP as part of its newfound religion in communications. But nobody believes that Intel will actually sell DSP chips-at least not in the sense that the company's DSP design partner, Analog Devices, sells DSP chips. Intel has been very open about the fact that it will incorporate the jointly developed core, code-named Frio (after the Rio Frio in Texas), into an ASIC implementation. Most of Intel's promo ink has been devoted to how Frio will be part of its personal Internet computer architecture (PCA), based largely on its Xscale RISC core. But will it report the PCA-centric product as a DSP chip? Don't bet on it. As an ASIC? Probably not, even though there will be a number of PCA variants. Most likely, PCA products will be reported as 32-bit RISC chips, based on Xscale, with a DSP coprocessor. After all, Intel will want to continue showing a leadership ranking in RISC or MPU shipments.
Aside from the traditional DSP chip houses, Intel is not alone in implementing DSP cores along with RISC engines. The cell phone market has a number of chip vendors shipping ASIC DSPs, each sharing a die with a RISC core. Cell phone chip shipments by LSI Logic, Infineon, Qualcomm and Hitachi are examples of tens of millions of DSP shipments that are not catalogued as DSPs. LSI Logic, as a top-ranked ASIC house, ships millions of DSP-based ASICs in many chips other than for cell phones, but reports them as ASICs, thereby maintaining a strong ASIC market position.
But with the inevitable industry-wide move to system-on-chip solutions, one can eventually term the majority of VLSI chips as ASICs, anyway. Even top-ranked DSP house Texas Instruments ships more than $1 billion worth of ASICs annually, but TI has no desire to be ranked as an ASIC house. And, few of the 80 or more chip vendors that incorporate DSP technology in their products want to challenge TI's top DSP market position, so most will opt to categorize their products as something else.
Vendors of DSP-based video-processing chips, modem chips, speech-recognition chips, music synthesis chips, set-top-box chips and so on will opt for the top rank in their narrower markets. After all, any company can be No. 1 if it judiciously restricts its market definition.
The lesson is that as DSP technology continues to become pervasive, it will lose its unique identity except among the top players.
WILL Strauss, President of Forward Concepts (Tempe, Ariz.), tracks markets driven by DSP (wis@fwdconcepts.com).
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