In essence, the customer's development prototype can be cloned for mass production with the assurance of identical performance. The FlashDSP 1616 is designed as a developmental vehicle for processors destined for digital cellular and similar signal coding applications. Included in the product line are CMOS, Bipolar, GaAs and High Voltage custom and standard products, advanced integrated modules, communications devices, graphics and speech processors, interconnect products, lightwave products, and power supplies. Leveraging flash memory for a competitive DSP advantage Flash memory chips are increasingly being used in computers as a replacement for magnetic storage devices like disk drives because they can store much more information in very small spaces. Peripherals the size of a credit card are now available to augment the available memory of laptop and notebook computers for storing files and applications programs.
Flash memory is stored on a computer chip, and can be erased and updated with new information.
The bottom line of the merger of flash memory and DSPs is the ability of the manufacturer to shorten the ramp-up interval for new products by up to three months. Typically, this process continues through several generations of software fixes over several months until the final prototype is acceptable and its version of software is introduced into volume manufacturing. But this pales in comparison with the potential revenue from products that can now be shipped months earlier, thanks to the compressed development interval. By comparison, FlashDSP technology lets the software engineer write and modify software, then test it directly on the engineering model in seconds, removing about 16 weeks from the production cycle. An additional step in the product introduction cycle is eliminated by FlashDSP technology since hardware engineers no longer need to create a prototype board design and layout iteration.