David Martinez et al
Intel

The suitability of Intel multi-core processors for embedded digital signal processing (DSP) applications is now being reevaluated. Major advances in power-efficient transistor technology, optimized multi-core processor microarchitectures and the evolution of Intel Streaming SIMD Extensions (Intel SSE) for vector processing have combined to produce favorable GFLOPS/watt and GFLOPS/size ratios.

In addition, other factors such as code portability across the entire range of Intel processors and a large set of Intel and third-party software development tools and performance libraries often mean that software development and support costs can be substantially reduced.

This excerpt explains the techniques used to implement and benchmark performance of medical ultrasound processing algorithms using a variety of current Intel processors and indicates that current Intel Architecture Processors may now be suitable for a surprising amount of intensive DSP work.