[Discuss-gnuradio] Re: UC professor says SW radio a bad idea

[Philip Mackenzie]

Not everyone agrees with Bob Brodersen about DSPs. Heres an extract from
'The Digital Signal Processor Derby', IEEE Comms Magazine, June 2001.

Although DSP processors still typically have a strong advantage relative to
general-purpose processors in terms of price and power consumption, this
difference is not insurmountable for vendors of the latter. In addition, DSP
processors have lagged behind their up-and-coming rivals in several areas
unrelated to performance. Popular general-purpose processors tend to have
better software development tools than DSP processors, particularly
compilers. General-purpose processors, unlike most DSPs, are frequently
available from multiple vendors.

In addition, general-purpose processor vendors have maintained software
compatibility between generations, whereas historically, DSP processor
vendors have not. Upgrading to a newer, faster DSP processor has typically
required customers to learn a new architecture, new tools, and to rewrite
their software completely--in assembly language, no less. These
disadvantages of DSPs relative to general-purpose processors were not
critical when the two classes were not in direct competition. But now that
some general-purpose processors have the performance to compete with DSPs in
DSP applications, these issues have become significant, and are influencing
the direction of DSP processor development and business models.

Full article:
http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/WEBONLY/publicfeature/jun01/dsign.html


Philip.