Audio processors boast top performance

Two new audio processors are claimed to deliver the audio industry's highest performance and integration.

Continuing the rich audio tradition of its SHARC processor family, Analog Devices has released two new audio processors that deliver the audio industry's highest performance and integration.

With performance to 400MHz, the ADSP-21367 and ADSP-21368 SHARC processors easily implement an increasing array of features required for consumer and premium audio products.

These high-end third-generation SHARC processors are designed to simplify product development, speed time to market and reduce product costs for a variety of audio applications including audio/video receivers (AVRs), professional mixing consoles and digital synthesisers.

With the new SHARC processors, manufacturers can create competitively differentiated products for their high-end customers more quickly, easily and cost-effectively than ever before.

"Manufacturers of premium audio systems are continually challenged to develop higher-performance, feature-rich products as rapidly as possible", said Brian McAloon, Group Vice President and General Manager, Digital Signal Processing Systems Division, Analog Devices "The SHARC processor architecture, with its 32 and 40bit floating-point capability, already offers the highest-quality audio possible".

"These two new SHARC processors extend ADI's industry-leading audio capabilities to a new pinnacle of performance, memory and peripheral integration, and ease of use, so that manufacturers of mid- and high-end AVRs and professional audio products can rapidly introduce differentiated products that satisfy the cravings of their high-end customers".

Already, SHARC processors are included in products marketed by Bose, Denon, Kenwood, Pioneer, Samsung, Sony, Yamaha and many other leading consumer electronics makers; by pro audio product manufacturers such as Crown, Harrison, Mackie, Studer and Tascam; and in automobiles from Audi, BMW, Chrysler, Dodge, Lexus and Toyota.

The high-end third-generation SHARC processors offer significant value to premium audio systems developers.

"SRS Labs' portfolio of technologies covers everything from single speaker stereo enhancement to advanced 6.1 surround sound decoding".

"We are very impressed with the performance of ADI's SHARC processors because they seamlessly support our audio technologies to deliver the best available audio experience for consumers in a wide variety of product applications", said Alan Kraemer, Executive Vice President of SRS Labs' Technology and Business Development Group.

"DTS is dedicated to delivering the ultimate entertainment experience, and as such we are excited about the third-generation SHARC processors and the performance they provide".

"These latest SHARC processors will provide our customers greater selection in implementing the various DTS technologies", said Brian Towne, Vice President, Consumer and Pro Audio Division at DTS.

Designed for audio applications requiring the highest possible performance, the ADSP-21367 and ADSP-21368 integrate a 400MHz core with large (2Mbit RAM, 6Mbit ROM) on-chip memory arrays and sophisticated audio-centric peripherals.

These capabilities enable the new SHARC processors to support today's consumer and premium audio products' requirement for features such as multichannel decoders including lossless formats, multizone support, 192kHz processing and sophisticated auto-setup routines.

According to BDTI: "When they arrive, these new parts will make the SHARC family significantly faster than its main competitor, the Texas Instruments TMS320C67x".

"The '21367 and '21368 are expected to achieve a BDTIsimMark2000 score of 2050 at 400MHz, compared with a BDTImark2000 score of 1470 for the 300MHz 'C6713".

The processors' 400MHz performance leads the industry and is a four-fold increase over the second-generation ADSP-2116x SHARC processors.

With this performance, the new processors easily implement all currently available industry-standard audio decoder and post-processing algorithms, with sufficient processing headroom remaining for customer-specific post-processing and future features.

The ADSP-21367 and ADSP-21368 also are the most highly integrated members of the third-generation SHARC family.

Their 6Mbit of on-chip ROM is factory-programmed with industry-standard audio decoder and postprocessor algorithms, which will enable manufacturers to implement many audio systems using a single chip.

In addition, the new SHARC processors include eight full-duplex, high-bandwidth serial ports; an S/PDIF transmitter/receiver; two signal routing units for peripheral-to-pin configuration; two UARTs; four precision clock generators; up to 34 GPIO pins; 10 hardware interrupts; two serial peripheral interface (SPI) ports; three timers; a two wire interface (TWI); an input data port for parallel data or additional I2S serial channels; and an eight-channel hardware asynchronous sample-rate convertor, which significantly reduce the number of required external components in a product design and, ultimately, the end-system costs.

The ADSP-21368 also includes support for shared memory systems, a feature particularly useful in multiprocessor professional audio systems such as recording studio mixing consoles.

The processors' high-bandwidth, highly efficient, 32bit external memory interface simplifies software and hardware development by speeding algorithm development, ensuring that ADI is the first to market with the newest audio algorithms.

The glueless interface to SRAM, Flash and SDRAM allows embedded audio designers to take advantage of the most cost-effective memory technology, again resulting in lower overall system costs.

As a result, the new SHARC processors help makers of audio products to reach the market with new, validated and tested, high-performance products with unprecedented speed.

The ADSP-21367 is aimed at the mid- to high-end AVR market.

The ADSP-21368 adds shared memory capabilities that make it ideal for professional audio applications.

With both processors, manufacturers can frequently replace multiple DSPs in a design with a single SHARC processor.

ADI's development tools for SHARC processors include the Crosscore family, which encompasses the VisualDSP++ integrated software development environment, EZ-Kit Lite evaluation systems and emulators for rapid on-chip debugging.

The ADSP-21367 and ADSP-21368 SHARC processors will be sampling in Q1 2005, and will be available in quantity in the summer of 2005 for $29.95 and $34.95, respectively.

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