Axe 3, you say? TigerSHARCs are phased out without replacement, it seems

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Rex said:
I'm not sure who the big distributors of the TI chip are, but here's a brief survey of availability:

Arrow Electronics: 11 in stock;
Rochester Electronics: 9 in stock;
Mouser: 3 in stock;
Chip1StoP: 11 in stock;
DigiKey: a whopping 42 in stock.


Hard to produce a product based on those numbers.
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For what it's worth, from my experience with processors, as soon as you place an order for a quantity from a vendor, that they can't fill, they order more of the part from the manufacturer, and the manufacturer goes ahead and makes another batch. I usually see low numbers for processors in general.
 
BillyZeppa said:
For what it's worth, from my experience with processors, as soon as you place an order for a quantity from a vendor, that they can't fill, they order more of the part from the manufacturer, and the manufacturer goes ahead and makes another batch. I usually see low numbers for processors in general.
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Understood. Availability does seem to have opened up a bit. When I checked about six months ago, lead times were six months, and only two of them were available anywhere. :)
 
I should buy a few spares then. :) Once it's not possible to make them anymore, I'll have "new old stock" and it'll be 10x the price. Keep two for myself, sell the rest.
 
From just a very cursory look at the TI document comparing their DSP to the TigerShark DSP it would appear that the TI DSP chip is substantially more powerful than the Tigershark. Its really about how well the FAS software can take advantage of the hardware and we already know how good FAS software is ! They might even be able to go to a single processor and reduce both latency and cost
 
Here's a thought. If the phasing out becomes a problem, can a high end graphics processor platform be adapted for use with DSP processing? Unlike the general CPU issue that Cliff has mentioned, those chips are insanely powerful one-trick ponies. If anyone else could make such a chip, I'd bet it to be Nvidia.
 
Womac911 said:
Here's a thought. If the phasing out becomes a problem, can a high end graphics processor platform be adapted for use with DSP processing? Unlike the general CPU issue that Cliff has mentioned, those chips are insanely powerful one-trick ponies. If anyone else could make such a chip, I'd bet it to be Nvidia.
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Kind of the same issue as with x86 CPUs - the product lifycycle is pretty short. Also, GPU power and heat is pretty high, even for the low end stuff.
 
selta said:
Kind of the same issue as with x86 CPUs - the product lifycycle is pretty short. Also, GPU power and heat is pretty high, even for the low end stuff.
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There was a link to an article earlier in this thread which also claimed that GPUs aren't great DSPs because its hard to get low latency with these applications.
 
I just wonder why they are phasing out the tiger sharc processors in the first place? Are they selling that bad?

It really does suck, because instead of making something better for a CPU to use in the axe fx III now they are not going to even make the tiger sharcs anymore, they seem to be in favor of going backwards instead of forwards to me.
 
Personally I think fractal audio may buy the rights to make and own the tiger sharc. They could sub source them out to a over seas company. And produce them for a cheaper price. Hence the beginning of "fractal industries"
 
aaronv84 said:
Personally I think fractal audio may buy the rights to make and own the tiger sharc. They could sub source them out to a over seas company. And produce them for a cheaper price. Hence the beginning of "fractal industries"
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That would be great. So what is it about the TigerShark that makes them essential - apparently many if not most that are looking for a substitute are switching to 'BlackFin'..
 
BillyZeppa said:
That would be great. So what is it about the TigerShark that makes them essential - apparently many if not most that are looking for a substitute are switching to 'BlackFin'..
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That's good question lol.... I don't really know for sure jus that it's a powerful processer.
 
aaronv84 said:
Personally I think fractal audio may buy the rights to make and own the tiger sharc. They could sub source them out to a over seas company. And produce them for a cheaper price. Hence the beginning of "fractal industries"
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Yeaaaah.... I can't see that happening.
 
BillyZeppa said:
That would be great. So what is it about the TigerShark that makes them essential - apparently many if not most that are looking for a substitute are switching to 'BlackFin'..
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I have never heard of this "blackfin" processor. Is it as good or better than the Tiger Sharc?
 
So basically the tiger sharc was the bees knees when it came to an application like the axe fxII? And they are being phased out.....like I said....it is going backwards instead of forwards.

You would think the people that brought you the tiger sharc processor had something even more powerful in mind......guess not!
 
so if I understand, better to order now one of the last FX2XL units and have the best hardware possible for the next century....?!
Just googled TigerSharc and very surprised to see that it was mainly used in AxeFx and Origin Synth by Arturia.
So the world don't need powerfull DSP anymore...
Easy to guess that Cliff will optimise a little his magic algorithms but no hope for major improvements...
Welcome in the world of mediocrity, having all the same power with sharc DSP...

But today people don't play that much guitar and it's just the beginning. It will happen with good audio in general with expensive components.

Ax8 is nice but not what I wanted, an AxeFX III
 
Guitarboy said:
so if I understand, better to order now one of the last FX2XL units and have the best hardware possible for the next century....?!
Just googled TigerSharc and very surprised to see that it was mainly used in AxeFx and Origin Synth by Arturia.
So the world don't need powerfull DSP anymore...
Easy to guess that Cliff will optimise a little his magic algorithms but no hope for major improvements...
Welcome in the world of mediocrity, having all the same power with sharc DSP...

But today people don't play that much guitar and it's just the beginning. It will happen with good audio in general with expensive components.

Ax8 is nice but not what I wanted, an AxeFX III
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There are other options, recommended by Analog Devices, for those who were using TigerSharks for their applications, but not in the Shark line of processors. There may be a way to get equally powerful real time processing out of a system with less on-chip ram, and a few more chips, using their latest DSP offerings, or someone else's, including equally low latency. Then there's FPGA, where you can get right down to the gate level to speed everything up, and standard code like C can be converted to parallel processing hardware units physically within the chip, rather than strictly running series of instructions, drastically speeding up parallel operations - and FPGA's are offered with DSP processors and some RAM on board - so if there are more numbers needing crunching per second in future Quantum versions, there may be a way.
 
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