More good news from TI. From the open platforms principal architect:

"TI is continuing to make our devices more and more open. In addition to the low-cost C64x+ DSP tools, open source DSP Link, and open source Codec Engine, plus configuration tool, the DM6446 VICP is now usable by everyone via the VICP Signal Processing Library

The VICP is a collection of loosely coupled accelerators attached to the C64x+ DSP within the DM6446. The VICP signal processing library provides a simple way of programming these accelerators to provide additional DSP performance within your system. "

If you are wondering why this is big news, its because these tools allow outside developers unprecedented access to the power of TI's DSP, essentially unlocking the power of a chip that's has a price performance ratio that few others can match. The Davinci 6446 chip is about the size of a dime, can do real time high definition video encoding, has such low power consumption it can operate without even a heat sink and using battery power. These chips essentially are bringing laptop type performance to handhelds (or silent set-top devices). For more information, see my youtube intro of the OSD2 dev kit.

For discussion, see the mailing list thread and TI's community site