Bell Labs Researchers Develop New Enginesfor Communications Networks

SAN FRANCISCO, Feb. 14 -- Researchers at Lucent Technologies' Bell Labs have developed what they describe as a new approach to building the signal processing engines needed for tomorrow's communications networks. The Bell Labs approach, called Daytona, allows multiple digital signal processors (DSPs) to be integrated on a single silicon chip, which the researchers say will be able to provide processing up to 16 times faster than conventional DSP chips.
Unlike the DSPs used in today's communications networks and modems, the Daytona architecture uses a bus, or interconnection 'fabric,' that allows multiple DSP cores to share communication and memory resources on a single chip, which reduces cost and power requirements, said Joe Williams, lead Bell Labs researcher. Bryan Ackland, who heads the DSP and VLSI systems research department at Bell Labs, commented, In next-generation broadband wired and wireless communication systems, significantly faster processing speeds will be needed for real-time audio, video and data transmission. The Daytona architecture tackles this challenge by efficiently connecting many DSPs to work together on a single silicon chip.