ADSP218x compatible IP
   
 

QualCore has developed its own chip that is functionally and pin-to-pin compatible with with Analog Devices’ AD218 DSP. The chip series is called Vijay and is certified by Analog Devices. QualCore also provides the soft IP cores for this DSP, which are configurable and are therefore area optimal. Typical applications for the Vijay Core include Voice Compression, Audio Compression, Spectrum Analysis among many others

Challenge

This was a major product development project for QualCore, which involved firstly defining the detailed specifications of the DSP, translating the specification to silicon and finally verifying the chip at system level.
 
Features
  Key features of QualCore’s DSP chip include
 
  • Configurable to 16/24 bits, with or without pipeline

  • 3 Bus architecture allowing dual operand fetches in every cycle

  • Multifunction instructions

  • Low power dissipation in idle mode

  • On chip RAM of 160KB divided into data and program memory

  • 2 independent data address generators

  • Computational unit comprises – ALU, barrel shifter, MAC. Supports primitives for division

  • Powerful program sequencer which provides zero looping overhead and conditional instruction execution

  • Choice of IDMA or BDMA interface
  For details please access the data sheet
   
  Scope of work
 
  • Detailed definition of AD218 specification – instruction set, instruction timing, pin configuration/electrical characteristics, architecture

  • System design of DSP architecture including ALU, Control Unit and Peripheral Interface

  • End-to-end ASIC design- RTL Design, Verification, Synthesis, Physical Design and Tape-out hand-off. Fabrication was in 0.18µ technology

  • Development of prototype board as well as application programs to test the DSP chip