MELPe or MELP vocoder for secure portable device

Steve Underwood wrote:


>>> A DSP to run MELP is <$2. Which Pentium is cheaper than that?
>>
>> What is the DSP that is under $2 and can run MELP? I suggest something 
>> like Blackfin/TMS55xx, but those DSPs are about $8 in quantities.
> 
> You seem seiously out of touch with pricing. Even the Analog web site 
> shows much lower prices for modest quantities of Blackfin parts,

WHERE?
Please, provide me a link with such a remarkable price for BF.
The TMS-55xx is somewhat more expensive.

> more powerful than MELP requires. If you are really buying, you can 
> negotiate a much lower price.

I have some doubts about it.

> You probably can't get down to $2, but 
> then you don't need such a powerful machine for MELP. There are a number 
> of DSPs offering 100MIPs for which the masked version is <$2 for 10's of K.

Just the licensing fees for MELP would probably be higher then $2 per unit.

VLV

Vladimir Vassilevsky wrote:
> 
> 
> Steve Underwood wrote:
> 
> 
>>>> A DSP to run MELP is <$2. Which Pentium is cheaper than that?
>>>
>>>
>>> What is the DSP that is under $2 and can run MELP? I suggest 
>>> something like Blackfin/TMS55xx, but those DSPs are about $8 in 
>>> quantities.
>>
>>
>> You seem seiously out of touch with pricing. Even the Analog web site 
>> shows much lower prices for modest quantities of Blackfin parts,
> 
> 
> WHERE?
> Please, provide me a link with such a remarkable price for BF.
> The TMS-55xx is somewhat more expensive.

http://www.analog.com/processors/processors/blackfin/BlackfinFamilyReferenceTable.html 
shows the Blackfins starting at $4.95 in 10K quantities. Analog's 
advertised prices are usually closer to reality than most, so the real 
price is probably about $4.

>> more powerful than MELP requires. If you are really buying, you can 
>> negotiate a much lower price.
> 
> 
> I have some doubts about it.

If you doubt it I guess you have never negotiated serious prices for 
reasonable volumes of semiconductors. Once the volumes reach 10's of 
thousands, a negotiated price can be dramatically lower than anything 
advertised. As I said, Analog have a history of advertising prices 
closer to reality than most people.

>> You probably can't get down to $2, but then you don't need such a 
>> powerful machine for MELP. There are a number of DSPs offering 100MIPs 
>> for which the masked version is <$2 for 10's of K.
> 
> 
> Just the licensing fees for MELP would probably be higher then $2 per unit.

This might well be true. :-)

 From something someone else posted it sounds like MELP might require 
rather more RAM than most other speech codecs. If that is true, some of 
the cheaper devices might not do the job. However, for many codecs the 
reference code uses far more RAM than an optimised solution. If you have 
spare MIPs it is also often possible to dump and recalculate vectors 
later, so reducing the peak RAM demand.

Regards,
Steve

 > Vladimir Vassilevsky wrote:
>> Steve Underwood wrote:
>>>> A DSP to run MELP is <$2. Which Pentium is cheaper than that?

The actual issue was; given that 533MHz Pentium or PowerPc is already 
the main processor in the system, does one need a DSP co-processor for 
running MELPe?

Based on Compandent's performance, the answer is NO!
One may use the given 533MHz Pentium or PowerPc, and may not need DSP 
co-processor!  Which may dramatically save R&D cost a few bucks on each 
product.

For the performance on Pentium etc. see:
http://www.compandent.com/MELPePackageFactSheetPOSIX.pdf
Note the amazingly efficient implementation on Pentium & Ultra Sparc!

>> You probably can't get down to $2, but then you don't need such a 
>> powerful machine for MELP. There are a number of DSPs offering 100MIPs 
>> for which the masked version is <$2 for 10's of K.

In  high volume, appropriate DSP for MELPe would cost about $5-6 (with 
adequate MIPS & memory)

> Just the licensing fees for MELP would probably be higher then $2 per unit.

That is correct for commercial application, but not for US government & 
NATO application.

For commercial applications IPR holders are TI, Microsoft, AT&T/Lucent 
(NPP only), Compandent, and Thales (600 bps only).

Interestingly, since TI normally waives its IPR for TI's DSP based 
implementations, the cost of MELPe on Analog Devices' DSP implementation 
may be further higher than on TI's...

Steve Underwood wrote:


> http://www.analog.com/processors/processors/blackfin/BlackfinFamilyReferenceTable.html 
> shows the Blackfins starting at $4.95 in 10K quantities.


Yes, you are right. I was looking for the low cost middle performance 
DSP about one year ago. The price dropped since then.

 > Analog's
 > advertised prices are usually closer to reality than most, so the real
 > price is probably about $4


>>> more powerful than MELP requires. If you are really buying, you can 
>>> negotiate a much lower price.
>>
>> I have some doubts about it.
> 
> 
> If you doubt it I guess you have never negotiated serious prices for 
> reasonable volumes of semiconductors.

Yes. I don't have experience with more then several thousands pieces.


  Once the volumes reach 10's of
> thousands, a negotiated price can be dramatically lower than anything 
> advertised. As I said, Analog have a history of advertising prices 
> closer to reality than most people.

Sometimes, the ADI is raising the price for a product after some 
introductory period.

VLV

Looking for hardware board with analog audio to feed MELPe bitstream into our system.
SW

Looking for hardware board with analog audio to feed MELPe bitstream into our system.
SW

There's lots of helpful information and data about the MELP vocoder and MELPe codec at:
Http://www.melpe.org
Incluing implementations, software, hardware and solutions