Which exact Keystone DSP in the Axe-Fx III?

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Guitarboy said:
It’s interesting also to know what DSP (and what kind of price) to think about the next step = Ax8 II, which could get one of these 1ghz Keystone... and be as powerful as an XL II....

TigerSHARC were a lot more expensive than Ax8 Sharc... but will it be the same for next gen...?
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The Axe8 uses a couple of SHARC ADSP-21469, which on mouser are listed for around $25 a piece... so $50 total. So around a 2x difference in price instead of a 10-12x difference, ignoring all the external parts that go along to support the SoC.
 
AlbertA said:
Assuming they use this one:
http://www.ti.com/product/tms320c6672/samplebuy

Then around $100-$150

So if that's the case, then yeah much cheaper than a couple of TigerSHARCS for sure.
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Since the III costs as much as the II did, and has a larger color display, a graphics card, a high speed I/O controller, an FPGA chip for whatever it is doing, more I/O, and supposedly (hopefully?) better converters/preamps, it would make sense that the share of the main DSPs should drop in the overall bill of materials. It was somewhat ridiculous in the II anyway.
 
As long as it sounds amazing (which I know it will) I don't care if processing is handled by a hamster on a wheel.

Back on topic: As an IT guy and certified tech geek, I share the OPs curiosity with what makes the III tick. Makes not one iota of difference either way, just professional curiosity. I am also interested in knowing the horsepower rating of my car engine, the cooling capacity of the air conditioner in my house, etc.
 
vangrieg said:
Since the III costs as much as the II did, and has a larger color display, a graphics card, a high speed I/O controller, an FPGA chip for whatever it is doing, more I/O, and supposedly (hopefully?) better converters/preamps, it would make sense that the share of the main DSPs should drop in the overall bill of materials. It was somewhat ridiculous in the II anyway.
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Axe-Fx II used an FPGA too, for peripheral and system bus functions, you can look it up in the manual. I'm guessing it's the same for the III.
 
We know that you're paying for access to Cliff's brain. The hardware is the vehicle to convey it to the world. The price is $500 less than I paid for my Axe II mark I.

And if you factor in, the 2018 buying power of that dollar amount, verses 2012 when I drank the cool-aid, it's even a bigger value.

I think it's a steal at this price.

I wanted totally seamless changes between scenes - what I described was 2 axe fx in parallel, using midi to turn the inputs off and on, in inverse relation to one another, so spill over would be possible between 2 adjacent sounds or each unit running 1 amp (at full resolution) for blending the tones, as opposed to running Amp1 and Amp2, each at a lesser resolution.

The Axe III achieves that.

I am excited. I'm 50 next week. Few things excite me anymore.
 
unix-guy said:
The III doesn't use the TigerSharc CPU... The whole point of this thread is among about the NEW chip being used, which is an Intel Keystone.

The TigerSharc is discontinued, thus why Fractal bought a stockpile - for the Axe Fx II.
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yes, sorry, i was unclear.

i meant that perhaps part of the impetus for the new architecture was the declining stash of tigersharks.
 
It actually doesn't matter if the DSP cost $1, $10, $100 or even $1,000... the DSP is nothing else than a chip that does calculations. When you buy a Fractal, you don't buy a calculator. What makes the Fractal (and any other modellers for that matter) is all the brain behind the algorithms, OS stability, UI design, audio fidelity, etc... If you would buy the Fractal for its DSP alone, you wouldn't get very much far and wouldn't have much audio to beginning with.

So what really matters is the end price and what you get for it, as a package / complete solution. Is the Fractal Axe-FX III worth the $2,490 price tag? That's up to anyone to decide... regardless the cost of one component that is inside. Because if we look like that, even a $3,000+ Amp will surely have a resistor, switch, cable or any component that won't be worth more than a dollar and it will still be what will give the amp its own tone... so what?

I understand there's some "geek/tech" out there that like to know (I could be geeky too sometimes); so there's nothing wrong for asking... as long as this won't be used as a way to "price" a product. No product is only priced by its BOM (Builds of Materials). There's always more to it such production cost, labor, support, marketing, you name it... and most of it, for innovative product you have R&D, that could be even way higher than the entire BOM when it comes to products that include "software" (like for the Fractal).

So in the end, maybe the DSP only cost $10, but there's a cost of $1,000 per unit for the R&D alone. And all those numbers are just stupid randoms numbers because nobody here (but Cliff) really knows... nor should care.

My 2¢
 
This question ever get answered? As a tech geek I find it interesting what makes the III tick. Also as someone else mentioned, it possibly gives us a rough idea of what a future AX8 Mk II might pack. Or not...
 
Wow, old thread!

I think what is way more interesting than "what chip" is inside (just open the box and look), is the algorithms, but obviously that is something that can't (and shouldn't) be fully disclosed. The chip (and surrounding hardware) is just a platform for the amazing modeling. Not that I'm asking Cliff or anyone at FAS to answer, but I do wounder, as processing power becomes greater and greater, could they perhaps be constructing detailed SPICE models of amps and running those on the AX boxes? I'm sure a ton of time has gone into this at FAS and they have figured out lots of creative tricks to make these units sound so great. Just from looking at the editor pages one can see the modeling is getting more and more detailed, and FAS engineers have spent a great deal of time understanding how various circuits really function and how to model them. Thank you Cliff and team!
 
vangrieg said:
Since the III costs as much as the II did, and has a larger color display, a graphics card, a high speed I/O controller, an FPGA chip for whatever it is doing, more I/O, and supposedly (hopefully?) better converters/preamps, it would make sense that the share of the main DSPs should drop in the overall bill of materials. It was somewhat ridiculous in the II anyway.
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This was my thought. Also, the engineering/tech guys on the forum like me are understandably curious. The first thing I usually did in college was to remove the cover of every electronic device I bought to see what was inside.

I'm not concerned with the cost of the chip. I'm happy that the final cost of the III did not surpass the II, despite all of the advances. Dwelling on the cost of the chip runs the risk of becoming a Mckenzien chucklehead.
 
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