MDSP
MDSP is a multiprocessor DSP family from Cradle Technologies. Currently used mostly in streaming video processing in broadcast and video surveillance security markets.
It is a loosely coupled architecture that employs compute and Input/output subsystems with programmable IO, consisting of general purpose and signal processing cores. The general purpose cores are used for control and IO processing and the DSP cores for fixed or floating point computation.
MDSP is similar in architecture to the Cell processor from STI
except it has multiple processing elements. Cell is PowerPC based. The PE or GPP units are 32 bit general purpose RISC-like cores coupled with signal processing units via a databus.Development tools
The initial software development kit was based on cygwin 1.3.x and Cradles umgcc. Sdk5 is based on Cygwin 1.5.x and cragcc.
The chips are programmed in a mix of C and CLASM. The PEs can be programmed in C, the DSEs and MTEs are programmed in CLASM. The programmer has to manage resource allocation using semaphores, paying special attention to keeping all DSP units fed with instructions.
