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Intellectual Property Cores
News Release from: Tensilica | Subject: HiFi 2 Audio Engine
Edited by the Electronicstalk Editorial
Team on 17 May 2007
Optimised decoder cuts power budget for
MP3
Tensilica has produced an optimised version of the industry-standard MP3 decoder for its Xtensa HiFi 2 Audio Engine and Diamond Standard 330HiFi processor core.
Tensilica has optimised the MP3 decoder for its Xtensa HiFi 2 Audio Engine and Diamond Standard 330HiFi processor core This MP3 decoder now runs at the lowest power and is the most efficient in the industry, requiring just 5.7MHz when running at 128Kbit/s, 44.1kHz and dissipating 0.45mW in TSMC's 65nm LP process (including memories)
This article was originally published on Electronicstalk on 7 Oct 2005 at 8.00am (UK)
Related stories
Embedded audio processor moves up to 24bit
The Xtensa HiFi 2 audio engine is a new an addon package for Tensilica's proven Xtensa LX processor, optimised specifically for today's consumer audio functions.
Audio engine gains mobile support
Two key mobile solutions, SRS WOW XT and SRS Xspace 3D, are now available on Tensilica's HiFi 2 audio engine.
This makes Tensilica's Xtensa HiFi 2 Audio Engine ideal for adding MP3 playback to cellular phones, where current carrier requirements are for 100 hours of playback time on a battery charge, and increasing to 200 hours in the near future.
This 5.7MHz requirement includes the entire MP3 decode functionality, including MPEG container parsing and variable length decoding (VLD, also known as Huffman decoding).
Some competing offerings are merely accelerator blocks that exclude portions of the complex control code in MP3 such as VLD, and thus rely on a processor to perform VLD decoding.
Further reading
Audio engine is sound choice for GPU
The Xtensa HiFi 2 audio engine drives the high-quality 24bit audio processing in the recently introduced Nvidia GoForce 5500 handheld graphics processing unit.
Audio cores add Ogg Vorbis support
Tensilica has added an Ogg Vorbis decoder for its popular Xtensa HiFi 2 audio engine and Diamond 330HiFi processor core.
Audio engine gains speech codec for VoIP
Tensilica has introduced another codec for its popular HiFi 2 Audio Engine and Diamond Standard 330HiFi processor core which are specifically optimised for audio in mobile multimedia devices.
Tensilica's 5.7MHz figure is all inclusive.
"Any good designer can get MP3 freeware off the Internet and run it on most processors, but they will find that it requires the processor to run at high megahertz and, thus, is power inefficient", stated Larry Przywara, Tensilica's Director of Mobile Multimedia Marketing.
"By carefully optimising our software, we were able to get better results than we've seen from any published competitive performance specifications".
Tensilica's MP3 decoder implements MPEG-1, MPEG-2 layer 1/2/3 and MPEG-2.5 layer 3 stereo decoding with support for constant bitrate, variable bitrate and free formats.
It is fully compliant with ISO/IEC11172-4.
Tensilica's HiFi 2 Audio Engine is the most popular commercial audio processor core for SOC designs, and this year Tensilica's customers are forecasting they will ship 100 million HiFi Audio Engine-enabled processor cores in a wide variety of consumer devices.
Tensilica's HiFi 2 Audio Engine is optimised with specialised audio instructions to increase code density (reducing memory requirements) and lower power (reducing processor speed requirements), making it very efficient for a wide range of audio-enabled consumer products.
Tensilica's cores with the HiFi 2 Audio Engine are full featured processors, used by customers to run operating systems, control code, and other functions in addition to audio.
In addition to MP3 decode and encode, the following software packages are available for the HiFi 2 Audio Engine: AC-3 decode and encode, AM3D, Dolby Digital Plus 5.1 and 7.1 decode, MPEG-4 aacPlus v1 and V2 decode and encode, MPEG-1/4 AAC LC decode and encode, Ogg Vorbis decode, QSound microQ, Sonivox Audioinside, WMA decode and encode, AMR narrowband and wideband speech, G.729AB speech, and SRS WOW XT, Xspace 3D and TruSound HD.
Tensilica's audio partners include: AM3D, Coding Technologies, Dolby Laboratories, Microsoft, QSound Labs, Sonivox, SRS Labs, and Thompson Multimedia.
Tensilica's MP3 decoder is available now starting at US $16,875 for a project-based licence.
Tensilica's processor cores are licensed separately.
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