All four HiFi Audio DSPs are click box additions to our customizable Xtensa LX processor and include the base Xtensa instruction set. This means that these are excellent targets for control applications as well as audio.

Because the HiFi DSPs use our Xtensa LX DPU, you have all the customization capabilities of our DPUs. Our HiFi DSPs give you all the flexibility of our Xtensa LX DPUs, including (but not limited to):

• Complete flexibility to add/configure caches and local memories
• Option to add direct RTL-like interfaces via Ports, Queues, and Lookup Interfaces
• Option to add custom instruction with full compiler support

See our Xtensa product section for more details

MP3 playback requires just 5.7 MHz when running at 128 Kbps, 44.1 KHz, and dissipates only 0.45 mW in TSMC’s 65nm LP process (including memories) with the HiFi 2 DSP. This gives you over 100 hours of battery life.

Cadence’s Tensilica HiFi Audio DSPs are optimized solutions for digital audio and voice. They can approach the performance of fixed-gate implementations, while providing the flexibility, time to market, and risk reduction of a processor-based solution, while simultaneously reducing silicon area and power consumption.

The HiFi Audio DSPs utilize the Xtensa LX processor technology with custom instructions (better code density, fewer cycles), flexible datapath widths (higher efficiency per cycles), multiple instructions per cycle (VLIW – higher efficiency per cycle), and simultaneous data operations (SIMD – parallelization). A comprehensive Eclipse-based software development environment is provided that includes everything from a source code editor, debugger, and ISS to an optimized compiler that provides excellent code density.

HiFi Mini is our smallest, lowest power DSP core supporting always listening voice trigger and speech command modes. The HiFi Mini DSP IP core enables a hands-free experience. Tensilica is working with Sensory and other software partners that will provide the voice-activation, speech command recognition, voice pre-processing and noise reduction products optimized on the HiFi Mini DSP.

We optimized the HiFi Mini DSP core to be as small and power efficient as possible for voice trigger and voice recognition in two major ways. First, the core uses compact 40-bit encoding, which significantly improves code size. Second, we added efficient16-bit instructions that are optimized for voice and audio codecs. 

The HiFi DSPs run all the decoders required around the world for digital audio, including:

• HD Radio – From iBiquity Digital
• DAB - in the MP3 decoder
• DAB+ - Certified by Dolby
• DRM – Certified by Dolby
• XM-Satellite – From XM Satellite
• T-DMB – In the BSAC decoder
• ISDB – In the AAC, HE-AAC decoders

All HiFi Audio DSPs are fully programmable in C – no assembly required. So if you have proprietary algorithms to port for a HiFi DSP, it’s easy and quick.

All HiFi DSPs are pre-packaged, ready to drop into DOC designs. They provide programmable support for over 90 audio, voice, and sound enhancement packages, which are pre-ported and ready to use, no software porting required.

Audio requirements for everything from smartphones to home stereo receivers are being driven by audio post processing.

For voice, smartphone requirements are moving from narrowband to wideband codecs with improved noise suppression, noise dependent volume control, and other algorithms to improve sound quality in crowded environments.

For home and car audio, audio enhancement software is significantly enriching the user experience, creating important competitive advantages.

And gaming requirements in all environments are driving the requirements up to 32 streams for immersive play.

The HiFi Audio DSPs have been designed into Blu-ray Disc, set-top boxes, and high-end home theater receiver SOCs.

HiFi EP’s architectural enhancements significantly improve DTS Master Audio decoding and tolerance to high external memory latency. With HiFi EP, single-core Blu-ray Disc SOCs can easily be implemented in 65GP with additional MHz to spare for other audio functions.

The HiFi 3 DSP’s 32-bit architecture significantly lowers the required MHz for complex audio enhancement algorithms, thus lowering the required power.

Because of the efficiency of the HiFi architectures, the HiFi Audio DSPs require only a fraction of the available MHz to perform the audio decoding and encoding functions, leaving extra headroom for other control as well as media and signal processing tasks.

For more detailed information, please see the HiFi Product Brief.