A novel VLSI digital signal processor architecture for high-speed vector and transform operations

This paper presents a new concept in monolithic digital signal processing integrated circuits. The device is called a Vector Signal Processor (VSP) and is manufactured by Zoran Corporation. It achieves extremely high signal processing throughput in both the time and frequency domains for many standard DSP operations. It introduces a number of architectural features unique to digital signal processing components. Among these are: a "high-level" instruction set which allows programming at the functional level, embedded hardware to support block floating-point arithmetic, and the ability to easily parallel multiple devices to achieve signal processing throughput even higher than that attainable with a single device. The combination of these features and a powerful applications development environment make the VSP easy to both use and program for developing sophisticated, high-performance applications.