Philips Unleashes DSP Software Development Environment

Sunnyvale, CA-based Philips Semiconductors has released version 2.0 of its TriMedia software development environment. Engineers can use this enhanced software tool to ease the design of systems employing Philips' TriMedia very long instruction word (VLIW) processors, which are targeted at wireless applications.

The TriMedia software development environment includes tools to compile and debug multimedia applications and to optimize and analyze performance entirely in C/C++ programming languages. By using C/C++, designers streamline the application development process, reduce time-to-market, and cut cost.

The software development environment supports the TriMedia Streaming Software Architecture (TSSA). Developed by Philips, TSSA is a set of guidelines that promotes interoperability and reusability of components. The TSSA framework allows systems to be built from software components supplied by different vendors via a method of constructing and connecting autonomous, task-based software modules that then stream data between the various modules.

The new development system's tool suite also supports five levels of optimization including in-lining, complex control flow analysis, inter-procedural analysis, loop optimization and source level debugging with both a GUI and a command-line interface.

The TriMedia software development environment includes plug-ins to support Metrowerks CodeWarrior integrated development environment (IDE). Version 2.0 of the software development environment also provides device libraries and sample code for all on-chip peripheral units. It is available now and is priced at $1,500 for a single user license.

Edited by Robert Keenan