embedded world: DSP lifts radar/lidar and 5G performance

26th February 2019

Mick Elliott

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Datasheet

Boosting performance by up to 10X for Automotive Radar/Lidar and up to 30X for 5G communications the Cadence Tensilica ConnX B20 DSP IP becomes the highest-performing DSP in the ConnX family. Based on a deeper processor pipeline architecture, this DSP provides a faster and more power-efficient solution for the automotive and 5G communications markets, including next-generation radar, lidar, vehicle-to-everything (V2X), user equipment (UE)/infrastructure and IoT applications.

Further expanding the ConnX family, Cadence has introduced the ConnX B10 DSP, which delivers half the vector width of the ConnX B20 DSP for applications requiring less parallelism.

Both the trend toward higher resolution imaging radar with more antennas for autonomous driving applications and the emergence of 5G mobile equipment and infrastructure demand significantly more processing power.

In addition, consumer/industrial radar, automotive V2X and 5G IoT applications all require low-energy processing solutions. With the addition of the ConnX B20 and B10 DSPs, the ConnX family meets the demands for higher performance and low energy consumption.

Software compatible with the rest of the ConnX DSP family (the ConnX BBE16/32/64EP), the ConnX B20 DSP has a 512-bit vector width up to 128 MACs, can load 1024 bits of data each cycle and achieves 1.4GHz or greater frequency in 16nm process technology.

This extends the DSP family to serve an even broader range of performance.

Customers have a variety of algorithm acceleration options to reduce cycle counts, including higher precision with either 32-bit fixed-point operations (including operations to optimize MAC, FFT and FIR) with native complex support, or single-/half-precision vector floating-point (VFPU) operations with half precision at 2X the single-precision throughput.

This flexibility allows customers to choose higher precision only when needed. In addition, an extended VFPU option enables support for complex floating-point operations and doubles the real floating-point operations at the same vector width typically used in the front end of the radar processing chain.

The communications option accelerates forward-error correction (FEC) in lower bit-rate communication applications seeking software-defined radio solutions.

General availability for both the ConnX B20 and B10 DSPs is planned for the second quarter of 2019. Customers interested in early access should contact Cadence.