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Blocks bring benefits – SPONSORED TUTORIAL
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19/01/2006
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Speech recording and playback is an increasingly common feature in applications ranging from security systems and electronic toys to home appliances, automotive infotainment and safety equipment.
Designers of these speech based applications are under pressure to keep development time to a minimum. At the same time, they must keep the cost of such systems – and the space they require – as low as possible. But with software production now taking a greater proportion of product development time, this is a significant challenge.
In particular, demands for ever higher performance are typically leading to increases in software size, corresponding rises in project development times and increased application code storage requirements.
This is why companies such as Toshiba are actively developing software IP – high quality ‘building blocks’ for commonly used functions – that can shorten significantly the time the designer needs to spend on software development. This, in turn, gives them more time to concentrate on the application specific elements of their designs. Such IP solutions can be seen in such areas as USB drivers, TCP/IP protocol drivers, Jpeg decoders, IrDA interfaces and, more recently, in dedicated IP blocks for speech recording and playback.
Finally, cost pressures mean developers are not only expected to reduce component count, but to also run software using the most cost effective processor technology available. This means that, unlike the ‘middleware’ typically targeted at RISC microprocessors, there is a growing demand for small and efficient IP targeted at relatively low cost CISC microcontrollers.
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Author
Herbert Willems
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