Tensilica's Xtensa HiFi Audio Engine
Passes Microsoft WMA Compliance Testing
SANTA
CLARA, Calif., April 12, 2004 - Tensilica,
Inc., today announced that its Xtensa HiFi
Audio Engine's Windows Media Audio (WMA)
decoder passed compliance testing by Microsoft
Corp. This compliance testing is important
because it assures system-on-chip (SOC) designers
that they can design products with the Xtensa
HiFi Audio Engine that will play all files
encoded in the WMA format.
WMA provides consumers high quality
music in half the file size of the MP3 format,
and makes it easy for device manufacturers and
chip manufacturers to license WMA thanks to its
attractive licensing terms. As a result,
WMA is now supported more than 500 consumer electronic
devices including DVD players, set-top boxes,
car stereos and portable music players.
"We are pleased that Tensilica
is offering high-quality WMA to its customers," said
Jason Reindorp, group manager in the Windows
Digital Media Division at Microsoft. "With
the growing popularity of consumer electronic
devices supporting WMA, Tensilica's Xtensa technology
is poised to be an even more popular solution
for embedded system developers."
In addition to supporting WMA,
the Xtensa HiFi Audio Engine also supports Dolby
Digital AC-3 decode and consumer encode, MP3
decode and encode, MPEG-2/4 AAC decode and encode,
and the G723-1 and G729AB speech codecs. Because
the engine is programmable, multiple audio formats
can run on the same hardware, allowing the same
silicon to be used for multiple applications.
In addition, designers can further customize
the underlying Xtensa processor so it can be
used for other functions on the chip.
The 24-bit Xtensa HiFi Audio Engine
has inherent advantages over the industry standard
16-bit audio processors in use today. It provides
superior sound quality of compressed files due
to the increased precision available for intermediate
calculations in the compression and decompression
algorithms.
"Successfully completing the WMA
compliance testing is another important milestone
for our popular Xtensa HiFi Audio Engine," stated
Bernie Rosenthal, Tensilica's senior vice president
of marketing and sales. "Audio is becoming so
important in today's consumer devices that many
designers want a fast, safe design solution.
The Xtensa HiFi Audio Engine is ready now and
can help SOC designers quickly add audio to their
next design project."
All of the algorithm solutions
for the Xtensa HiFi Audio Engine were designed
and developed by CuTe Solutions, Hyderabad, India.
CuTe Solutions has a dedicated ASIC design team
that designs and develops DSP/Xtensa processor-based
SoC platforms catering to audio and voice applications.
For more information, visit www.cutesolinc.com .
About Tensilica
Tensilica was founded in July 1997
to address the growing need for optimized, application-specific
microprocessor solutions in high-volume embedded
applications. With a configurable and extensible
microprocessor core called Xtensa, Tensilica
is the only company that has automated and patented
the time-consuming process of generating a customized
microprocessor core along with a complete software
development tool environment, producing new configurations
in a matter of hours. For more information, visit www.tensilica.com .
# # #
Editors' Notes:
- "Tensilica" and "Xtensa" are
registered trademarks belonging to Tensilica
Inc. All other trademarks are the property
of their respective holders.
- Tensilica's announced licensees
include Agilent, AMCC (JNI Corporation), Astute
Networks, Avision, Bay Microsystems, Broadcom,
Cisco Systems, Conexant Systems, Crimson Microsystems,
Cypress, ETRI, FUJIFILM Microdevices, Fujitsu
Ltd., Hudson Soft, Hughes Network Systems,
Ikanos Communications, LG Electronics, Marvell,
NEC Laboratories America, NEC Corporation,
Nippon Telephone and Telegraph (NTT), Olympus
Optical Co. Ltd., S2io, Solid State Systems
(3S), Sony, STMicroelectronics, TranSwitch
Corporation, and Victor Company of Japan (JVC).
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