Tensilica's Product Overview

Audio DSP, Baseband DSP, or Your Own Customized Value-Add Engine – Tensilica’s IP Cores Excel in the SOC Dataplane

Tensilica is the #1 supplier of audio DSP IP cores and 4G baseband DSP IP cores for the mobile, handset, and home entertainment markets.

In fact, no matter what the function is, if your SOC design demands a highly-efficient, programmable computational engine for a data-intensive task, our innovative technology can provide a solution for you.

For the most common and broadly applicable tasks in the dataplane, Tensilica has ready made solutions like our HiFi Audio DSPs, our ConnX Communications DSPs and our Diamond Standard controllers for deeply embedded dataplane control.

For more specialized tasks, you can rapidly build your own customized dataplane processor for tasks like image signal processing, video processing, security protocol processing, or network packet processing using our Xtensa Processor Generator.

Why do Tensilica’s customers keep coming back for more? Two main reasons:

1. They like our comprehensive, total solutions for audio and baseband DSPs.
2. They’ve discovered that it’s easy to develop their own programmable cores with Tensilica’s customized processors that provide much higher performance with lower area and lower power. This is essential for tasks in the SOC dataplane and is why we call our processor cores DPUs (dataplane processing units).

DPUs Do the Hard Stuff – the Data Processing that the Control Processor Can’t Do

Where Tensilica’s cores really shine is in the dataplane - the "other" part of the chip where typically designers use RTL blocks to do the "heavy lifting". The problem with those RTL blocks is that they take a long time to design, take even longer to verify, and are not programmable for making changes post-silicon.

DPUs combine the best of CPUs and DSPs with 10-to-100x the performance. DPUs can do BOTH performance intensive DSP (audio, video, imaging, and baseband signal processing) and embedded RISC CPU processing functions (security, networking, and deeply embedded control).

#1 in Audio DSP IP Cores

Tensilica offers the best audio DSP IP cores in the industry. With a full range of audio codecs plus sound-enhancement software from industry leaders AM3D, Dolby, DTS, QSound, and SRS, Tensilica’s HiFi Audio is becoming the de facto standard for high-quality audio. In home entertainment, we were the first IP provider certified for DTS Master Audio and we offer outstanding support for Dolby codecs and HD Radio. Because they require so little power, Tensilica’s HiFi Audio DSPs have brought home entertainment quality to smartphones, digital cameras and other portable electronic devices.

#1 in LTE DSP IP Cores

Why have so many companies picked Tensilica’s DSPs for their 4G LTE designs? With the widest range of DSP IP cores, Tensilica can provide the performance level you need for your design, from our basic ConnX D2 dual-MAC DSP all the way up to our newest ConnX BBE64, a 64 – 128 MAC DSP designed specifically to meet the throughput challenges of LTE Advanced communications. Our Atlas reference architecture implements the entire 3GPP LTE layer 1 PHY, including the computationally demanding Turbo decoder, in a completely processor-based, fully programmable DSP core reference architecture.

Xtensa Customizable Processors

You can get the best performance, lowest power and smallest size by customizing a processor for your exact application. There are three fundamental ways you can optimize Xtensa processors:

1. You can stream data into and out of the processor directly, without going through the processor bus. This means no load/store overhead and RTL-like performance.
2. You can use our check-box configuration options to pick just what you need in terms of memories, interfaces, and more.
3. You can add custom instructions that merge several operations into one, do something unique for your product, and allow for fast parallel execution.

Diamond Standard Controllers

Tensilica offers a wide range of standard controller options from very small, 32-bit ultra-low-power, cache-less RISC controller up to a powerful high-performance 3-issue VLIW CPU.

Backed by the Best Tools in the Industry

Whether you're a hardware designer or a software developer, an inexperienced engineer or an experienced Tensilica user, Tensilica has a comprehensive set of tools to make your job much easier and more productive. Our tools that help you design a custom processor are unrivalled in our industry.

Every processor you get from Tensilica, be it a standard DSP or a processor you customized yourself, comes with an automatically generated, matching software tool chain that includes an outstanding C/C++ compiler, ISS, debugger, and code generation and analysis tools that will speed the software development process.

Base Architecture and Cool Technology

In this section, you'll read about the architecture behind all of these products - Tensilica's efficient, low-power Xtensa architecture. You also can read about the complete software tool chain, third party ecosystem, EDA flows, and models available with every Tensilica processor.