Agilent Technologies Inc. today announced that the Agilent 93000 system-on-a-chip (SOC) Series has been selected to test China's first embedded digital signal processor (DSP), called CoStar.

With features of low power consumption and flexible programmability, the CoStar DSP is widely used in high-end applications such as mobile communication and digital TV. Multiple CoStar DSPs have been used in the latest 3G mobile phones, for example, to enable features such as MP3 audio and digital video.

Developed by the Institute of Microelectronics of the China Academy of Science (IMECAS), the reconfigurable CoStar DSP is one of the semiconductor industry's highest performing DSP chips, with calculation capabilities exceeding 1 GigaMAC per second with power consumption a miniscule 0.15 mW/MMAC. The CoStar DSP was designed at the SOC laboratory of the IMECAS with support from the National High-Tech Research and Development Program and the "Hundred Talent Program" (a program to attract talented returnees to China from institutions abroad). The CoStar DSP is one of the first devices to rely completely on local supply chain resources for design, manufacturing, packaging and testing. Agilent continues to partner with China's IC design and manufacturing industry to provide testing resources that support the rapid release of further innovations from China.