Texas InstrumentsIntegration Magazine

DSP Designer's Notebook

Texas Instruments has compiled 60 TMS320 DSP Designer's Notebook pages into one volume.

DSP Designer's Notebook pages are brief application notes providing design tips for everyone using, studying or designing with TI digital signal processors.

The notes are written by TI application and design engineers, TMS320 third-parties and professors to deliver technical insight about current TI DSP devices. The pages are published and mailed quarterly with the Details on Signal Processing newsletter, which currently has a circulation of approximately 60,000 DSP designers in the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Europe and Asia.

The following are excerpts from two DSP Designer's Notebook pages.

Initializing the TMS320C5x DSK board

Design problem No. 57: In some instances, my DSK applications do not run properly. At other times the application seems to run, but nothing happens. For example, the TRY1.ASM code in the User's Guide does not work.

Solution: You are seeing the effects of an uninitialized DSK board. The try1 example works correctly only if you initialize the DSK before entering the try1 routine. In fact, the most important task you must perform before starting any application is DSK initialization. Initialization is done in software preceding the entry to your application and must be done only if the Analog Interface Circuit is to be used.

Three things must be initialized:
1. The TMS320C50 on-chip timer
2. The 'C5x serial port
3. The Analog Interface Circuit

Serial ROM boot

Design Problem No. 37: How do I use a serial ROM for minimum form factor storage of boot code?

Solution: With ever increasing speeds of DSP devices such as the 'C5x, and the increasing demand for reduced form factors such as in HDD applications, there is a need for integrating the program memory into the DSP device. For volume production whereby the program code has been fully debugged and changes are not foreseen, masked ROM is appropriate. However, for prototyping and preproduction evaluation, a programmable device is desirable, i.e., a DSP with EPROM memory. However, EPROM technology has not kept pace with the speed requirements of a DSP and hence other solutions need to be found in the interim. One solution is to populate the DSP with internal RAM that can be programmed at boot time from an external source. This external source can be either a coprocessor or a smaller form factor ROM. To meet the need of minimum board area, a serial ROM is an ideal device for such applications.

February 1996, vol. 13, no. 1


Return to Integration Home Page
 TI Home     Search      Feedback      Semiconductor Home

(c) Copyright 1996 Texas Instruments Incorporated. All rights reserved.
Trademarks, Important Notice!