MARCH 23--According to a recent report by Venture Development Corporation (VDC; Natick, MA; www.vdc-corp.com), "Digital Signal Processing: Global Market Demand Analysis," unit volume shipments of merchant digital-signal-processing boards are projected to increase at a 1.9% compound annual growth rate (CAGR). However, when segmenting use by type of processor, VDC's research reveals that unit shipments of boards using DSPs alone are projected to decline slightly, with a CAGR of -0.2% over the forecast period of 2003--2008, while shipments of boards that include DSPs combined with field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) are expected to increase at a CAGR of 4.3%, more than offsetting this decline.
Embedded hardware practice director Eric Gulliksen says, "FPGAs and traditional DSPs are not competing technologies, but actually complement one another. Each has its own strong points. DSPs are most appropriate for relatively complex tasks with limited bandwidth requirements, while FPGAs may be partitioned and programmed to perform simple, repetitive tasks in parallel when high bandwidth is required. Thus, FPGAs can be used as highly efficient 'front ends' for digital signal processing."
The report is available at www.vdc-corp.com/embedded/reports/03/br03-20.html.
