May 16th, 2009 ~ by admin
TI has purchased Luminary Micro for an undisclosed amount of money. TI, one of the larger producers of embedded processors, and applications processors for mobile phones add significantly to their portfolio by adding Luminary, maker of ARM Cortex based microcontrollers. Most of TI’s line of processor are now ARM based. They do of course also make MCS-51 products as well as their VERY widely used DSP series (such as the TMS320 series).
Source: EE Times
January 13th, 2009 ~ by admin
When you think of multi-core CPU’s what comes to mind? Intel? AMD? Perhaps Nvidia, but certainly not TI.
Alas though, the embedded CPU/MCU market is by far the largest user of multicore CPU’s. Many systems controllers have an ARM main core, and then a MCS-51 core for IO stuff, or another ARM core. The iPhone has no less then 3 ARM cores in it.
TI just released the MSP430FE42X2, in large quantities its a mere $1 US. It includes 2 complete MSP430 cores, along with an LCD driver, and 32K of Flash. Where will you find it? Its marketed as a complete power meter solution, only other component needed to measure your houses power draw is a voltage regulator.
MSP430 Power Meter
The future of embedded computing IS multi-core controllers/ASICs
Source: TI (Texas Instruments)
January 12th, 2009 ~ by admin
Today I got a not so old (2006) Infocus IN24 projector. It had bit the dust due to corrosion from the warm salty air in Maui.
What did I find inside? besides some amazingly cool optics, and power components, there was a large TI DLP Processor, specifically the DDP2000, a rather large BGA chip, that integrates most of the projectors functions as well as a DSP core, and a ARM 946 CPU core. running at 120MHz, good enough for 800×600 resolution.
Processor is the one marked DLP, bare die is a SRAM, far right is the DLP mirror, imaging chip (just layed on the board for your viewing)
Ti DLP ARM CPU and Sensor
