Developing for TI DSPs suddenly 20x cheaper

THANKS TO the work of small firm Neuros of OSD Linux DVR/Media Centre fame, Texas Instruments recently decided to let open source developers use its proprietary DSP compiler for free.

Digital Signal Processors (DSPs) are used everywhere nowadays, from digital cameras to MP4 players and mobile phones. The Texas based semiconductor firm TI, known to old geeks for its legendary TI-99/4A computer which sparked a generation of geeks in the 80s, is enjoying success in the semiconductor space with its Da Vinci line of DSPs, along with other flavours of its DSPs coupled with different CPU cores. However, developing for a DSP was an expensive proposition, until now.

Tech firm Neuros says TI has "generously decided to release a Linux version of their c54x C and C++ compiler free for use with open source projects. This is an important first step to getting open source codecs running on the DSP of the Neuros OSD, as well as for other projects which make use of TI's DM320 or other products containing a c54x DSP. It's also significant because it represents a new and important level of support for open source from TI."

It should be noted that the Neuros OSD Linux media centre sports a TI DM320 DSP, which has an ARM926 core and a TMS320 C5409 DSP. The head of the firm, Joe Born, thinks that this free software will make the OSD one attractive choice for TI's DSP development, as it's 20x cheaper than buying the commercial compiler and one of TI's development kits. Of course, by "free software" we mean "free as in beer" and not "as in freedom" as bearded guru Stallman would say. The OSD is currently retailing for $229 at popular retailer Amazon.com

The firm makes clear that there's no debugger "This is not the complete CCS environment, rather a standalone compiler; what TI calls Code Generation Tools. It's just the compiler, optimizer, assembler, linker. The downside is: there is no debugger. Then again, to use a debugger, you would also need a compatible JTAG". The firm also made it clear that this applies to open sauce development only, and that people wishing to work on closed source products must purchase the full blown commercial product from TI: "the compiler is only freely available (and redistributable) for open source projects. Any commercial users of the compiler will still need to purchase a regularly licensed copy of CCS from TI. For complete DSP debug capability; consider purchasing TI's Code Composer Studio IDE".

Reactions to TI's announcement have been positive so far. Commenter Ydef on the company's Wiki said: "Texas Instruments? The most stubborn and uncooperative company the open source community has had to deal with?" to conclude "So yes this was a milestone breakthrough of sorts, and a HUGE step in the right direction."

Neuros Technology's Joe Born told the INQUIRER: "we feel this is a pretty significant milestone, that we were able to get TI to release this especially considering they have a big profitable division turning out these proprietary, expensive tools. This move would essentially move the cost of developing for some of their devices from $5-10K to $200, obviously well within the range of ordinary hackers.

Asked about TI's reach in the embedded market, Born said: "TI's silicon has often been coveted for its combination of high performance, low power consumption as well as low cost. TI's silicon powers something like 55% of the world market for cell phones". He concluded that "any steps they make towards opening devices and allowing independent developers to contribute has a lot of potential significance. As these devices become more powerful and PC like, the concept of "open" devices is becoming more realistic by the day."

The free TI compiler can be downloaded as a 11MB compressed bzip2 file from the Neuros web site, here. µ