Analog Devices' New TigerSHARC Processor Delivers Highest DSP Performance Per Watt, Per Dollar and Per Square Inch of Board Space.

Business Editors/High-Tech Writers

Embedded Processor Forum

SAN JOSE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--June 18, 2003

-- ADSP-TS201 offers 4.8 GMACS core processing, 24 Mbits on-chip memory and 5 Gbytes/second I/O bandwidth; At $34.95, ADSP-TS203 sets new price point for the TigerSHARC Processor family.

Addressing the requirements of the industry's most demanding signal processing systems, Analog Devices, Inc. (NYSE: ADI), a global leader in high-performance semiconductors for signal processing applications, today announced the next generation of TigerSHARC(R) Processors: the ADSP-TS201/202/203. Shipping to customers today, the TigerSHARC devices provide designers a new platform on which to build their high-performance and memory-intensive signal processing and imaging applications -- from full software radio implementations in 2G, 2.5G and 3G wireless base stations, 3D ultrasound and other medical imaging systems, radar and sonar applications, to industrial instrumentation -- designers can now realize the benefits of low power consumption, low costs and seamless multiprocessing in a software-programmable digital signal processor (DSP). In many of these systems the key metric is performance density. That is, performance per dollar, per watt or per square inch of board space that can be achieved by designers who rely on clusters of multiple processors working together to solve their design challenge. The new family of TigerSHARC Processors further extends ADI's leading position in performance density, delivering up to 1800 MFLOPS per Watt, 85 MFLOPS per dollar and 3600 MFLOPS per square inch.

"Applications requiring dozens of gigaflops of signal processing muscle were once the sole domain of expensive-to-design ASICs and power-hungry FPGAs," said Brian McAloon, group vice president and general manager, DSP and System Products, Analog Devices, Inc. "With TigerSHARC, however, we have been able to significantly reduce the system cost of very high-performance signal processing systems in base stations, for example, by replacing ASICs and FPGAs. This saves our customers time and board space and creates a software-defined radio platform that can be upgraded or reconfigured using software."

As a software-programmable processor, which can be programmed in C/C++ and/or in assembly language, TigerSHARC enables easy IP reuse -- thereby enhancing R&D productivity through each successive product generation. This programmability also dramatically lowers product maintenance costs by allowing designers to remotely upgrade systems that are already in the field.

New Features of the TigerSHARC Family

New members of the TigerSHARC family set the industry's highest levels of fixed-point and floating-point signal processing performance by achieving 4.8 billion multiply accumulates per second (GMACS) and 3.6 billion floating-point operations per second (GFLOPS) at 600 MHz. Through a balanced architecture, the ADSP-TS201/202/203 deliver higher levels of performance than competing processors operating at up to twice the frequency. The ADSP-TS201's balanced architecture achieves 5 Gbytes/second I/O bandwidth using new low voltage differential signal (LVDS) link port technology -- thereby enabling the sustained performance of the powerful TigerSHARC core. Furthermore, through fabrication and design collaboration with IBM Microelectronics (see press release: "Analog Devices and IBM Collaborate on New Family of High-performance DSPs," June 18, 2003), the new TigerSHARC devices become the first to integrate 24 Mbits of embedded DRAM on a DSP -- delivering three times the memory integration of competing processors. This large on-chip memory coupled with internal bandwidth of up to 38.4 Gbytes/second is essential to achieving higher performance.

The first low-cost offering in the TigerSHARC family, the ADSP-TS203, at less than $35, provides more than two times the floating-point performance, two times the fixed-point performance and twice the memory of comparatively priced processors. The ADSP-TS203 achieves an industry-leading 86 MFLOPS/dollar, with pricing at $34.95 each in quantities of 10,000 units.

About ADI's TigerSHARC Processor

The TigerSHARC Processor core is unique among high-performance signal processors in that it directly supports both fixed and floating-point data types. The core also supports a unique set of communication and imaging application-oriented instructions, enabling software implementations of functions that were previously available only through ASICs. The TigerSHARC Processor family features two interface types that directly support scalable multiprocessor systems without the need of costly external logic. The cluster bus allows up to 8 TigerSHARC Processors, a host and external memory to share a common bus and a global memory map, allowing for a very simple multiprocessing programming model. The link ports are very high bandwidth interfaces that allow for point-to-point communication between TigerSHARCs or other devices. The aggregate bandwidth of these interfaces is more than 5 Gbytes/second, the highest by far of any competing processor. Analog Devices provides a complete set of software and hardware development tools that include multiprocessing support. No other processor family provides such a rich feature set that directly supports applications requiring multiple processors.

Pricing and Availability

The newly announced TigerSHARC Processors provide a broad range of price and performance points to meet the needs of many different applications. All three TigerSHARC Processors are pin-compatible and are available in a 25 mm x 25 mm, 576-ball BGA package. The ADSP-TS201 is offered at 500 and 600 MHz with 24 Mbits of on-chip memory while the ADSP-TS202 and ADSP-TS203 are offered at 500 MHz with 12 Mbits and 4 Mbits of on-chip memory, respectively. Per-unit pricing for the ADSP-TS201, ADSP-TS202 and ADSP-TS203 in 10,000 units at 500 MHz is $299, $149 and $34.95 respectively. More information on ADI's ADSP-TS201/202/203 is available on the TigerSHARC Processor website: www.analog.com/tigersharc.

About Analog Devices, Inc.

Analog Devices is a leading manufacturer of precision high-performance integrated circuits used in analog and digital signal processing applications. The company is headquartered in Norwood, Massachusetts, and employs approximately 8,600 people worldwide. It has manufacturing facilities in Massachusetts, California, North Carolina, Ireland, the Philippines and the United Kingdom. Analog Devices' stock is listed on the New York Stock Exchange and the company is included in the S&P 500 Index.

TigerSHARC is a registered trademark of Analog Devices, Inc. All other trademarks included herein are the property of their respective owners.