Texas Instruments (TI) has introduced its TMS320C6748 DSP development kit for real-time analytics applications such as fingerprint recognition and face detection. The C6748 DSP development kit enables systems to sense and analyze biometric information for enhanced access control. It is also ideal for other digital signal processing applications, such as audio and communications. In addition, the C6748 DSP development kit comes pre-loaded with TI's new C6748 SYS/BIOS Software Development Kit (SDK).

The new C6748 SYS/BIOS SDK, meanwhile, includes several demonstrations for biometric analytic applications such as fingerprint recognition and face detection. It offers a starting point for developing and demonstrating the real-time intelligence of TI's C674x DSPs. The C6748 SYS/BIOS SDK enables developers to run demos in less than 10 minutes and begin creating DSP applications in less than one hour. In addition to the SDK, the C6748 DSP development kit includes the Code Composer Studio integrated development environment (IDE) v5.1.

TI also claims that the C6748 DSP development kit speeds and eases hardware development of real-time DSP applications. The board purportedly reduces design work through its accompanying board schematics and design files. With a wide variety of standard interfaces for connectivity and storage, developers can easily bring audio, video and other signals onto the board. In addition, expansion headers allow developers to add display and user interface technology, such as the camera board from Leopard Imaging and LCD screens, extending functionality of the development kit.

TI's scalable platform provides a variety of performance, power, peripheral and price options, which gives developers the opportunity to use it to create a varied product portfolio of their own. The C6748 DSP development kit is software- and pin-to-pin-compatible across TI's C6748, C6746 and C6742 DSPs and software-compatible with other TMS320C6000 DSPs. In addition, developers can scale to the software- and pin-for-pin-compatible OMAP-L138 and OMAP-L132 DSP+ARM9 processors to add high-level operating systems such as Linux. Developers can also add control and networking functionality for applications such as industrial control, medical diagnostics, and communications.

The C6748 DSP development kit is currently available for $195. The C6748 SYS/BIOS SDK is pre-loaded with the C6748 StarterWare software package. The floating- and fixed-point C674x DSP generation is available for a starting price of less than $5 in quantities of 10,000 units. Additionally, the OMAP-L138 DSP+ARM9 development kit is now available for $195. This kit is supported by a new Linux SDK. This SDK, available at no cost, enables developers to begin writing code in less than one hour. The Code Composer Studio IDE v5.1, pre-loaded on both kits, can be licensed starting at $495.