TI Multicore TMS320C6678 DSP and SVC, MVC, H.265

Recently TI announced a series of Multicore DSP including TMS320C6678. This series of DSP integrated fixed- and floating-point capability in the same DSP core and will be a major technical trend (see TI's white paper "TI’s new TMS320C66x fixed-and floating-point DSP core conquers the ‘Need for Speed’"). TMS320C6678 features eight 1.25 GHz DSP cores with 320 GMACs and 160 GFLOPs of combined fixed- and floating-point performance on a single device, and so provides users many rooms to develop new algorithm from Matlab or tools, to consolidate multiple DSPs to save board space and cost, as well as reduce overall power requirements.

It is very interesting that many new codecs and functions including Universal SVC, MVC, AVC Intra and H.265 are also supported on the C6678 DSP. Other available portfolio of video codecs includes the H.264, H.263, MPEG4, MPEG2, JPEG, VC1, Soren Spark encoders and decoders The portfolio of audio codecs includes the AAC, AACv2, AC3, MP3, WMA8, WMA9 encoders and decoders. The codec portfolio also includes a comprehensive set of wireline and wireless voice codecs.

TI will provide the multicore software developer's kit (MC-SDK), suite of multicore tools, and free codecs. The light version of C6678 EVM is sold for $399 in TI estore.

The EVM also includes a free MC-SDK, Code Composer Studio (CCS) integrated development environment, and suite of application/demo codes to allow programmers to quickly come up to speed on the new platform. Pricing for the C6678 DSP starts at $169 for 1Ku, according TI press release.