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Post by malba2366 on Mar 27, 2018 12:42:30 GMT -5
On their Facebook page in response to a post Emotiva said the RMC-1 will be released "soon pending an approval or two". Seems to me like the DSP chips are more significant than an approval or two....so maybe they got the DSP chips they were waiting on into their manufacturing facility.
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Post by Casey Leedom on Mar 27, 2018 12:51:11 GMT -5
As I noted in another thread, the Analog Devices ASIC was probably originally scheduled to be out earlier but has been dealing with their own issues in finishing up the ASIC. Quite possibly even addressing issues found by Emotive with the BETA chips ... Casey
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Post by malba2366 on Mar 27, 2018 15:10:19 GMT -5
This was posted by Emotiva Today. If they are still waiting on the Chips, that is very different than "an approval or two".
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Post by lesliew on Mar 27, 2018 22:56:38 GMT -5
Anyone know what the differences are between the ADI Griffin Lite DSP used in the Denon/Marantz kit vs the ADI Griffin Lite DSP used in the RMC-1. If Emotiva had this silicon first did they just get bumped from the production line by D&M because of the number of pieces that D&M ordered, or where Emotiva just dragging their feet and not sign off in time.
Code changes even the low level microcode that determines how the DSP operates can be made anytime, right up until the product is due to go out of the door. Not a good enough reason to hold up the production run.
D&M must have had their DSP's months ago and I would put money on it that they come out of the same chip FAB.
Sorry if this has already been discussed, haven't been keeping up lately.
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Post by Casey Leedom on Mar 28, 2018 0:01:39 GMT -5
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Post by lesliew on Mar 28, 2018 0:49:08 GMT -5
Emotiva is using is currently pre-production with production runs due to start in April ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ I know, you know your stuff but this is not enough to suggest its not the same chip. Bare in mind that "Emotiva's production run" probably does contain different microcode on the chip that enables it to process 16 channels unlike the 13 channels that the D&M variant can process, but this alone still wouldn't make it a different chip. Differences in the code would mean that it would have a slightly different part number, suffix or revision #, so before someone says that the part numbers aren't the same, well that's to be expected. I'm just being curious, not looking to fan any flames
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Post by cwt on Mar 28, 2018 7:31:56 GMT -5
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Post by lesliew on Mar 28, 2018 7:53:09 GMT -5
The ARM 5 core is an integral part of the Sharc Lite DSP, a bit like having a chip on a chip in the same way that they embed on chip memory for use as a cache.
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Post by rbk123 on Mar 28, 2018 8:10:56 GMT -5
On their Facebook page in response to a post Emotiva said the RMC-1 will be released "soon pending an approval or two". Both the remaining timeframe and the remaining hold up are vague on purpose; that is not just a casual slip of the keyboard.
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Post by mgbpuff on Mar 28, 2018 8:20:10 GMT -5
The Marantz AV-8500 uses a different ADI chip, the ASDP-21573. The RMC-1 uses the ADSP-SC573. I don't understand the difference between the two, but the 21573 block diagram appears to lack the Arm Cortex processor although the description of the 21573 reads just like the description of the SC573. Anyway, they are different chips!
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Post by lesliew on Mar 28, 2018 9:16:45 GMT -5
The Marantz AV-8500 uses a different ADI chip, the ASDP-21573. The RMC-1 uses the ADSP-SC573. I don't understand the difference between the two, but the 21573 block diagram appears to lack the Arm Cortex processor although the description of the 21573 reads just like the description of the SC573. Anyway, they are different chips! That makes it a bit clearer, I’ll check that out. Thanks
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Post by overtheair on Apr 1, 2018 14:53:11 GMT -5
The Marantz AV-8500 uses a different ADI chip, the ASDP-21573. The RMC-1 uses the ADSP-SC573. I don't understand the difference between the two, but the 21573 block diagram appears to lack the Arm Cortex processor although the description of the 21573 reads just like the description of the SC573. Anyway, they are different chips! Are you looking at this page on ADI's website? I doubt ADI are using different chip designs for these two parts, especially at these price points. It wouldn't be a very economical practice from a design and production perspective. More likely the same die is used for this entire family of products and then binned/selected for different speed and temperature grades. ADI could simply disable the features not required in the 21573 part. ADI is probably spinning the chip to get to 500MHz as well as automotive temperature grades across all package and speed combinations, Emotiva might only want 500MHz at commercial temperature grades for their product but neither is shown as available in the ADI datasheet yet which might be a reason for the delay. For reference see the ADSP-SC57x/ADSP-2157x Product Family datasheet Page 142 shows the available versions of the products as of the February 2018 datasheet. Page 141 shows the planned 500MHz parts and page 140 shows the planned automotive grade parts. Even if Emotiva don't need 500MHz (which is just my speculation for their delay), they might not want to commit to volume production on silicon that they know is about to change for commercial/product management reasons. Marantz might be more comfortable dealing with a silicon change during production. Another reason is that Emotiva wants to have the potential to support ongoing improvements from the platform, including possible upgrades for existing products in the field, so may have more of a need for 500MHz while Marantz is unlikely to offer the same level of upgrade ability, allowing Marantz to commit to current silicon. Just my 2c.
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Post by Boomzilla on Apr 2, 2018 7:23:18 GMT -5
...they (Emotiva) might not want to commit to volume production on silicon that they know is about to change... And in that case, then production will NEVER commence. There are few tech fields that change as quickly as home theater. Chips are ALWAYS being revised, and are (usually) obsolete in at least some ways by the time they ship in volume. So there's no such thing as "getting ahead of the curve" or even "delaying obsolescence." Sooner or later, all HT manufacturers must bite the bullet and get the product to market. This is true even of the largest multinational companies that make their own silicon. Please don't construe my comments as criticism of Emotiva (or any other manufacturer) - only as a comment on the state of the marketplace. And for what it's worth, I think Emotiva wise to avoid committing to release dates that they may or may not be able to meet. Some things are out of their control... Boomzilla
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Post by mgbpuff on Apr 2, 2018 8:04:33 GMT -5
The Marantz AV-8500 uses a different ADI chip, the ASDP-21573. The RMC-1 uses the ADSP-SC573. I don't understand the difference between the two, but the 21573 block diagram appears to lack the Arm Cortex processor although the description of the 21573 reads just like the description of the SC573. Anyway, they are different chips! Are you looking at this page on ADI's website? I doubt ADI are using different chip designs for these two parts, especially at these price points. It wouldn't be a very economical practice from a design and production perspective. More likely the same die is used for this entire family of products and then binned/selected for different speed and temperature grades. ADI could simply disable the features not required in the 21573 part. ADI is probably spinning the chip to get to 500MHz as well as automotive temperature grades across all package and speed combinations, Emotiva might only want 500MHz at commercial temperature grades for their product but neither is shown as available in the ADI datasheet yet which might be a reason for the delay. For reference see the ADSP-SC57x/ADSP-2157x Product Family datasheet Page 142 shows the available versions of the products as of the February 2018 datasheet. Page 141 shows the planned 500MHz parts and page 140 shows the planned automotive grade parts. Even if Emotiva don't need 500MHz (which is just my speculation for their delay), they might not want to commit to volume production on silicon that they know is about to change for commercial/product management reasons. Marantz might be more comfortable dealing with a silicon change during production. Another reason is that Emotiva wants to have the potential to support ongoing improvements from the platform, including possible upgrades for existing products in the field, so may have more of a need for 500MHz while Marantz is unlikely to offer the same level of upgrade ability, allowing Marantz to commit to current silicon. Just my 2c. Wow, that's a lot of guessing on your part! I simply saw pictures of both the RMC-1 and the AV-8500 which clearly showed the chips complete with part numbers. I have looked at the ADI information that you alluded to plus their block diagrams for each, but I can not understand the differences between the two. I do see that each chip only has 8 D/A, so two must be used for 16 channels. I wonder how this is done for Dolby Atmos 15 or 16 channel? is it similar to the multi-processor approach used by individual experimenters on the AVS site, which I always considered to be rather Rube Goldberish?
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KeithL
Administrator
Posts: 10,009
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Post by KeithL on Apr 2, 2018 11:59:55 GMT -5
The RMC-1 uses 16 individual Asahi KASEI (AKM) AK4490 DAC chips; each operated in differential mono mode; one for each channel. Are you looking at this page on ADI's website? I doubt ADI are using different chip designs for these two parts, especially at these price points. It wouldn't be a very economical practice from a design and production perspective. More likely the same die is used for this entire family of products and then binned/selected for different speed and temperature grades. ADI could simply disable the features not required in the 21573 part. ADI is probably spinning the chip to get to 500MHz as well as automotive temperature grades across all package and speed combinations, Emotiva might only want 500MHz at commercial temperature grades for their product but neither is shown as available in the ADI datasheet yet which might be a reason for the delay. For reference see the ADSP-SC57x/ADSP-2157x Product Family datasheet Page 142 shows the available versions of the products as of the February 2018 datasheet. Page 141 shows the planned 500MHz parts and page 140 shows the planned automotive grade parts. Even if Emotiva don't need 500MHz (which is just my speculation for their delay), they might not want to commit to volume production on silicon that they know is about to change for commercial/product management reasons. Marantz might be more comfortable dealing with a silicon change during production. Another reason is that Emotiva wants to have the potential to support ongoing improvements from the platform, including possible upgrades for existing products in the field, so may have more of a need for 500MHz while Marantz is unlikely to offer the same level of upgrade ability, allowing Marantz to commit to current silicon. Just my 2c. Wow, that's a lot of guessing on your part! I simply saw pictures of both the RMC-1 and the AV-8500 which clearly showed the chips complete with part numbers. I have looked at the ADI information that you alluded to plus their block diagrams for each, but I can not understand the differences between the two. I do see that each chip only has 8 D/A, so two must be used for 16 channels. I wonder how this is done for Dolby Atmos 15 or 16 channel? is it similar to the multi-processor approach used by individual experimenters on the AVS site, which I always considered to be rather Rube Goldberish?
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Post by Dan Laufman on Apr 2, 2018 12:13:20 GMT -5
Hi All, Interesting thread...
We have taken a different path to build our solution than other brands. We are using the ADI ADSP-SC573 parts. These parts are 450 MHz parts and they have an internal ARM5 processor, unlike the ADSP-21573's. The ARM5 processor is tightly integrated into our custom firmware framework. We need that high speed internal data buss to do our magic. There are compelling technical reasons that we have taken the path we have, and we're not talking about the details publically. It has been more time consuming and technically challenging, to say the least. It should be noted that It is also an original effort from the ground up; that is to say, we are not using a stock solution of relying on an earlier "porting" of previous firmware. We are aware of what the future holds and our high performance and flexible framework architecture makes our decoding engine essentially "future proof".
Things in the business are not nearly as simple as they may seem. Looking at the chips being used only sheds the light on a small portion of the solution.
Cheers, Big Dan
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Post by malba2366 on Apr 2, 2018 15:42:06 GMT -5
Sounds cool Dan. What are we looking at as a new release timeframe on the RMC-1?
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Post by bblv on Apr 3, 2018 23:57:48 GMT -5
Dan, thanks for the insight. Sitting here patiently waiting for more details and release date! Going to be an unbelievable processor.
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Post by wilburthegoose on Apr 4, 2018 9:52:46 GMT -5
Sounds cool Dan. What are we looking at as a new release timeframe on the RMC-1? Way back in the 1980's, I used to work with IBM products -hardware and software - quite a bit. IBM had a firm policy of never committing to release dates for new products. I think that'd be good strategy for Emotiva right now. Need to keep interest up, but supplying dates that are missed is a losing strategy. Consumers will get bored and move on.
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Post by musicfan on Apr 4, 2018 11:51:32 GMT -5
i thought we were going to get weekly updates?
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