Cadence Introduces the HiFi Integrator Studio
Cadence Design Systems has launched the Cadence HiFi Integrator Studio, an audio software framework for integrating Tensilica HiFi DSP-based systems on chip (SoCs) into their products.
This announcement also includes a hardware integration into the Android Studio development platform.
The HiFi Integrator Studio provides a standard operating system-agnostic software framework to interface audio, voice, and sensor functions running on the HiFi DSP to higher-level applications, such as media players or recorders.
The Android OS version demonstrates a complete end-to-end application from Java applications at the top, to Android Marshmallow-based middleware, to offloaded code running on the HiFi DSP—all in the Android Studio development environment. The integration with Android leverages the previously announced Cadence Tensilica HiFi Audio Tunneling for Android, which can reduce audio processing power by up to 14 times and double smartphone playback time.
By integrating the HiFi DSP in hardware together with Google's Android Studio emulator running on a PC, system developers can separate audio integration from Android bring-up, allowing earlier development of audio system software and enabling the developers to take advantage of the rich debugging environments available on PCs. Releases for Linux and other popular OSs will follow.
"We created the HiFi Integrator Studio to provide an environment for designers to easily integrate HiFi DSP-based SoCs into the most widely used OSs," said Larry Przywara, group director of audio/voice DSP marketing at Cadence, in a statement. "This framework speeds first-time integration of the HiFi-based SoCs and provides a clean separation of host OS and application software. In addition, the audio framework has been architected to support easy and fast maintenance and upgrades of HiFi-based platforms with the latest host AP OS releases."
Cadence this week also announced that Realtek Semiconductor has licensed its Tensilica Fusion digital signal processor (DSP) with voice-trigger always-on functionality to support ultra-low-power functionalities in its RTS3110/RTS3111 Context Hub chip.
This solution is ideal for seamless integration into any smartphone, tablet or wearable device. It embeds the Fusion DSP core and Realtek Voice Activity Detection (VAD) for motion sensing and voice wakeup/recognition detection.
The Tensilica Fusion DSP is a licensable semiconductor intellectual property (IP) core based upon the Xtensa processor architecture, and is highly configurable and scalable for low-energy Internet of Things (IoT) applications, including always-on listening.
"As the mobile industry continues to evolve, it needs to keep up with consumer demand for more sophisticated features and capabilities enabled by intelligent sensor management," said Yee-Wei Huang, vice president and spokesman of Realtek, in a statement. "We worked with Cadence software partners to integrate their Tensilica Fusion DSP-optimized always-on sensing functions to provide these features to customers who are developing smartphone, tablet and wearable devices. Our RTS3110/RTS3111 will simplify the implementation of low-power designs with a single-chip solution to offload always-on motion and voice-sensing capabilities."
"Realtek's RTS3110/ RTS3111 Context Hub chip delivers customers a market-leading solution for always-on sensing," Przywara said in a statement. "By integrating the Fusion DSP, it provides energy-efficient scalability to support increasingly complex sensing algorithms, a key competitive differentiation for mobile devices."
At the same time, Spreadtrum announced plans to license the Cadence Tensilica HiFi Audio/Voice digital signal processor (DSP) in its chipset platform for smartphones.
"Power consumption and battery life are key concerns as smartphones continue to play an increasingly essential role in consumers' lives," said Steven Yuan, senior vice president at Spreadtrum, in a statement. "We are glad to have the opportunity to cooperate with Cadence on Tensilica HiFi Audio/Voice DSP."
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