Volume 2 of El-Sharkawy’s set devoted to the use of Motorola’s floating-point digital signal processor (DSP) begins where the previous volume [1] ended, starting with chapter 10. Although this is a huge volume, there is not much that can be said about it. More than half of the pages are full of source code, memory dumps, and similar things. The code is available on disk from the author for an additional fee.

Chapter 10, the first in this volume, discusses an application program for image processing. It is a toy environment, however, since images are represented in four-bits-per-pixel format. The program and its usage are fully described. Chapter 11 delves into image processing, but limits the scope to elementary point and geometric processing, fortunately including two-dimensional fast Fourier transform (FFT) computations. All this material is seasoned with full source code and step-by-step explanations of how to make it run. Chapter12 is concerned with two-dimensional graphics applications, namely drawing curves and filling areas. Chapter 13 introduces some of the processing needed for three-dimensional transforms, namely vector and matrix operations. Chapter14 builds on the previous one and demonstrates some simple issues, including translation, scaling, and rotation. Full source code for both the DSP and the IBM PC is provided throughout these chapters.

Undoubtedly the most interesting chapter is the last one, on student projects. It begins with a three-dimensional scene viewing program, followed, however, by a strange description of a DSP96002-based card. The card description is practically useless. A well-designed Z buffer program and a discussion of user interface issues for the Windows environment follow. The chapter ends with a project for an image classifier, introducing the pruned FFT algorithm and its implementation and a backpropagation neural network classifier. Nearly 200 pages of appendices contain C source code for the working environment used throughout the book. If you have the first volume of this book, buy the second. If you have not bought the first book, but education or training is your primary area, consider buying the set. Otherwise, first check the excellent notes from Motorola as well as the free code from their BBS.