The ARM DSP instruction set extensions increase the DSP processing capability of ARM solutions in high-performance applications, while offering the low power consumption required by portable, battery-powered devices. The DSP extensions are optimized for a broad range of software applications including servo motor control, Voice over IP and video & audio codecs, where the extensions increase the DSP performance to enable efficient processing of the required tasks. Features: Single-cycle 16x16 and 32x16 MAC implementations 2-3 x DSP performance improvement on ARM9TDMI based CPU products Zero overhead saturation extension support New instructions to load and store pairs of registers, with enhanced addressing modes New CLZ instruction improves normalisation in arithmetic operations and improves divide performance Full support in the ARMv5TE and ARMv6 architecture
Applications: Servo motor control (HDD/DVD) Audio encode/decode (MP3: AAC, WMA) MPEG4 decode Voice and handwriting recognition Embedded control Bit exact algorithms (GSM-AMR)
The DSP extensions are simple to incorporate into application software, as ARM offers a fully supported development tool-chain. This speeds time-to-market as software plays an increasingly important role in product development. In addition, the extensions are completely transparent to the operating system (OS), allowing existing OS ports to be used. New applications running on the OS can be written to explicitly use the DSP extensions, providing an additional performance and low power advantage. Performance
The ARM DSP extensions enable increased DSP performance without the need for very high clock frequencies. This performance is achieved with almost no increase in power consumption on a typical implementation. In many applications including smartphones and similar embedded systems requiring considerable signal processing, the DSP extensions can often eliminate the need for additional hardware accelerators. The DSP extensions provide complete compatibility with the 32-bit ARM and 16-bit Thumb instruction set, ensuring that all existing OS and application code can be reused on DSP-enabled, ARM core-based devices. The extensions are broadly applicable across a wide range of market segments including wireless, mass storage, automotive, consumer entertainment and digital imaging. Related Information | 
