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An Independent Analysis of the CEVA-TeakLite-III Digital Signal Processing Core
The CEVA-TeakLite-III is a 32-bit licensable DSP processor core from CEVA that builds on the legacy of the CEVA-TeakLite, CEVA-TeakLite-II, and CEVA-Teak cores. CEVA-TeakLite-III targets a range of portable and high-definition audio applications, along with VoIP and cellular baseband. BDTI recently completed an independent analysis of the CEVA-TeakLite-III core. In this paper, BDTI presents benchmark results for the CEVA-TeakLite-III that quantify its speed, power efficiency, and area efficiency relative to those of several competitors, and analyzes its strengths and weaknesses.

Evolution of the DSP Core
Embedded Systems Europe - May 2009. Eran Briman describes the powering of advancements in communications and multimedia technologies

4G mobile designs call for programmable chips
Compared to current W-CDMA networks that support data rates of 2Mbit/s with additional rates improvements for HSPA, 4G modems will require almost a twenty-fold increase in processing horsepower. Designing a powerful and cost-effective communications IC that meets these stringent power constraints poses a fundamental challenge to the SoC designers.

Overcoming Challenges in HD Audio IC Design
Advances in video streaming and image rendering technologies have created exceptional High Definition moving image quality. Together with the increasing popularity of home entertainment centers, these have been significant drivers in the pursuit of the "movie theater" experience at home, or on portable electronic devices. This white paper will review different high definition delivery media, discuss the design challenges for IC designers and propose solutions and approaches for efficient HD audio implementation.

Architecture Oriented C Optimizations
Know your hardware! That's what it's all about. Using programming guidelines derived from the processor's architecture can dramatically improve performance of C applications. In some cases, it can even make the difference between having the application implemented in C and having it implemented in assembly. Well written C code and an advanced compiler that utilizes various architectural features often reach performance results similar to those of hand written assembly code. A quick survey of assembly coding drawbacks should make it fairly clear why real-time programmers need architecture oriented programming guidelines in their toolkit.

Combining C code with assembly code in DSP applications

Note: This Whitepaper has been updated as of August 2009 to reflect the update to the CEVA-X1622 DSP core and release version 9.2 of CEVA's Software Development Tools. As a result, the NB-AMR out-of-the-box results are 19 MIPS, and not as stated elsewhere.

As DSP processors become more powerful and compiler optimization techniques improve, the once common trend of writing DSP applications solely in assembly has withered away. Today, almost every DSP application is comprised of a combination of both C code and assembly code. In critical functions, where performance is of the essence, DSP engineers continue to use highly optimized assembly code. Less critical functions, however, are now written in C, allowing easier maintenance and better portability. This combination of C and assembly code requires special tools and methodologies in the tool box of every DSP engineer. It is well known that assembly coding has the advantage of better performance, while C coding is considered much easier and faster to write. To understand why this is so, let’s take a closer look at the advantages and disadvantages of assembly coding compared to C coding:

Smart Selection of Compilation Options in DSP Applications
As DSP processors become more and more powerful, the portion of code that can remain at the C level increases. However, compilers cannot produce optimized code without assistance from the programmer. To maximize the performance, the programmer must tune the compiler using various compilation options.

Portable Multimedia - Powerful, Flexible Solutions Powered By CEVA’s Mobile-Media
The ever increasing demands of multimedia processing capabilities from handset, PDA and other multimedia device manufacturers, and the escalating chip costs, are pushing the boundaries of silicon design. While hard-coded solutions were effective for one or two multimedia formats, the market is demanding that multiple formats and codecs be supported by the same design, to give a comprehensive and user-friendly experience to device owners. But as the audio, video and imaging formats became more numerous, the hard-coded paradigm was becoming cumbersome and ineffective.

Video Processing Approaches for a Portable Multimedia SoC
Strong consumer demand together with advances in technology for portable multimedia devices are challenging device manufacturers to integrate more features and services into smaller, cheaper and more versatile products. Nowadays, the list of technologies integrated into a typical cell phone extends far beyond cellular capabilities. Embedded cameras, MP3 players and LCD screens supporting imaging and video playback are de facto standards in every mid- to high-end phone on the market. Along with Personal Media Players (PMP), MobileTV and Personal Navigation Devices (PND), the markets for these multimedia-rich portable devices are expected to grow at a phenomenal rate. Research firm IDC predicts worldwide sales of mobile phones to top 1.2 billion units in 2010 with Informa Telecoms & Media forecasting the MobileTV market to grow from a total of 0.13 million units in 2005 to 83.5 million by 2010.