Analog Devices' New SHARC Processor Delivers the Industry's Best Floating-Point Price/Performance; Starting at $5, new ADSP-21375 brings floating point performance to mass market applications.

NORWOOD, Mass. -- Analog Devices, Inc. (NYSE:ADI) today announced its latest SHARC(R) floating-point processor delivers almost a three-fold increase in megaflops per dollar over the nearest VLIW DSP competitor. The ADSP-21375, starting at $5, will allow engineers to utilize the precision of floating point processors in even the most cost-sensitive application areas. Offering breakthrough levels of 319 megaflops per dollar, the new SHARC is ideal for a wide variety of applications such as mass market audio/video, industrial, and medical products. For additional information see http://www.analog.com/en/epProd/0,,ADSP-21375,00.html.

"Thanks to our newest SHARC Processor, DSP programmers will no longer need to trade off precision for price," said Jerry McGuire, general manager, Convergent Platforms and Services Group, Analog Devices, Inc. "Often times, on integer machines, programmers spend as much development time ensuring the numerical accuracy of their algorithms as they do in implementation. Floating-point processing eliminates concerns of dynamic range and enables significant reduction of development time. In addition, the $5 price point reduces system eBOM costs making the ADSP-21375 SHARC floating-point precision accessible to the broadest range of today's products and tomorrow's emerging applications."

The ADSP-21375 floating-point processor combines the SHARC family's high-performance digital signal processing core operating at 266 MHz with on-chip memory in an economical 208-pin QFP (quad flat pack) or BGA (ball grid array) package. It also has 2 Mb of Mask ROM and 0.5 Mb of internal RAM with direct execution from memory. The ADSP-21375 is pin-compatible with other third-generation SHARC Processors, enabling "scalable performance" - customers gain the ability to spread development costs across multiple products based on a single platform design - reducing development time and maximizing return on investment.

Leading Development Tools

In addition, ADI supplies a range of development tools for SHARC Processors to assist developers in getting their products to market faster. Available tools include the CROSSCORE family, which encompasses the VisualDSP++(R) integrated software development environment and EZ-KIT Lite(TM) evaluation systems and emulators for rapid on-chip debugging.

Floating-Point Leadership

For more than 10 years, SHARC has dominated the floating-point DSP market, delivering exceptional core and memory performance complemented by outstanding I/O throughput. Starting at 319 MFLOPS per dollar, the SHARC family makes floating-point processing economical for more applications. For the highest performance multiprocessing, TigerSHARC Processors deliver performance well above a billion floating-point operations per second. One GByte/sec multiprocessing link ports gluelessly connect multiple TigerSHARC processors and the 24 Mbits of on-chip memory integrated onto each device.

About Analog Devices

Innovation, performance, and excellence are the cultural pillars on which Analog Devices has built one of the longest standing, highest growth companies within the technology sector. Acknowledged industry-wide as the world leader in data conversion and signal conditioning technology, Analog Devices serves over 60,000 customers, representing virtually all types of electronic equipment. Celebrating 40 years as a leading global manufacturer of high-performance integrated circuits used in analog and digital signal processing applications, Analog Devices is headquartered in Norwood, Massachusetts, with design and manufacturing facilities throughout the world. Analog Devices' common stock is listed on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker "ADI" and is included in the S&P 500 Index.

SHARC and VisualDSP++ are registered trademarks and EZ-KIT Lite is a trademark of Analog Devices, Inc. All other trademarks included herein are the property of their respective owners.