New Cadence Partner offers Voice Processing for Tensilica HiFi Audio DSPs

Fortemedia's groundbreaking voice processing solution, iS600, is now available optimized for Cadence's Tensilica® HiFi DSPs. The iS600 high performance voice processing technology dramatically improves user experience in voice communication and voice recognition for smart phones. In the past, such performance was only available with a custom dedicated DSP that had enough devoted bandwidth and memory. With iS600, a superior solution can be available on a licensable DSP which is already integrated in many equipment including smartphones, tablets, Digital TV, STB, Blu-ray Disc players, Car Entertainment Systems and Lap Top/Desktop Computers. See the rest of their press release.

AMD's new True Audio features Cadence Tensilica HiFi Audio DSPs

Read the interview with AMD’s Carl Wakeland. Wakeland is a Fellow Design Engineer and considered the “author” of TrueAudio. TrueAudio includes one HiFi EP and two HiFi 2 DSPs.

Cadence adds Dolby and DTS SW for Tensilica HiFi Audio DSPs

Cadence announced that it was the first company to offer an IP core solution supporting Dolby Digital Plus with DS1 and DTS Neural Surround.

The Dolby DS1 for Dolby Digital Plus is for applications in mobile devices such as handsets and tablets as well as any infotainment system with small speakers, like ultra-slim flat-panel TVs. Dolby DS1 for Digital Plus is optimized to provide mobile users with home theater-inspired sound quality by enabling a distortion-free audio/voice boost and also by compensating for unintelligible dialogue, extreme volume variation, and deficiencies inherent in the small speakers and low-power amplifiers on most mobile devices. See press release.

DTS Neural Surround brings a home theater-like experience to automobiles and A/V receivers, significantly enhancing the sound quality of upmixing from compressed media types like MP3. Many recent sports and music broadcasts, including Rolling Stones concerts and the 2013 Super Bowl, were broadcast in DTS Neural Surround to ensure that fans received the highest level quality audio. See press release.

Dialog Semiconductor Licenses Cadence's Industry-Leading Tensilica HiFi Audio/Voice DSP IP

“Sound quality, performance and low power architecture are critical contributors to our reputation and success with our leading customers,” said Mark Tyndall, vice president of corporate development and strategy at Dialog. “The Cadence Tensilica HiFi Audio/Voice DSP delivers in all these areas and has a comprehensive software partner ecosystem, which is essential for the connectivity and portable device markets we serve.”
Read more here.

Today's moving day! Tensilica employees are moving to the Cadence campus

It's work-from-home days while the trucks move our stuff over to the Cadence campus. Our new office address is 2655 Seely Avenue, Building 8, San Jose, CA 95134. The main phone number is 408-943-1234. And our Tensilica email addresses will still work, so you can easily get in touch with us.

Cadence's Building 10 - You can't miss it from Montague Expressway in San Jose

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Renesas Licenses Cadence’s Tensilica ConnX D2 DSP for Next-Generation IoT Chip

Combined with the special acceleration packages optimized for IoT wired and wireless modem standards, the ConnX D2 DSP was selected because it met the low-power, small-size and high-performance requirements for Renesas’ new chip, with extra headroom for future standards. The acceleration packages enable a 10X power/performance improvement over the standard ConnX D2 performance.
Read press release.

MStar Licenses Tensilica IP Core from Cadence

“By leveraging the capabilities of the Xtensa DPU, we were able to better optimize our design for higher efficiency,” stated WK Chia, Vice President of Research and Development, MStar. “As a result, we were able to further enhance our home entertainment platform and provide our customers with more cost-efficient solutions.”
Read the press release.

Cadence Tensilica DPU Featured in new GEO Semiconductor Geometric Processing IC for Ultra-Wide Angle Cameras and Pico Projector Based Heads-Up displays

"The GW3300 integrates GEO’s patented eWARP® core and a Tensilica® CPU with parallel and MIPI interfaces on both inputs and outputs. The GW3300’s fully programmable geometry processing engine can correct for complex lens distortion, perspective and rotational misalignment, as well as brightness nonuniformityin real time with as low as 1/6 frame of latency." See GEO's press release.

Cadence First to Demo Complete M-PCIe PHY and Controller Solution at MIPI and PCI-SIG Conferences

One of the hottest (or should I say coolest – because low power is so important) new standards is PCI Express® (PCIe) over M-PHY, or M-PCIe.  To implement it properly, it’s essential that the controller and PHY work well together as the interface specification between them is, to put it mildly, loosely defined. 

Our booth was jammed at the PCI-SIG conference, and our demo of a complete PHY and controller for mobile PCI Express was very impressive.  Find out more on the Cadence blog.

What Cadence's Acquisition of Evatronix Brings to the IP Party

Cadence's expanding IP portfolio now includes Evatronix.  They bring some great IP products to the Cadence mix, including USB solutions, NAND Flash IP, SD Host 4.0, MIPI SLIMbus IP, and an 8051 controller.  Find out more by reading this blog.

Cadence Fellow and Ex Tensilica Founder and CTO Chris Rowen Interviewed about Cadence Acquisition by New Electronics

"He describes the acquisition by Cadence as a watershed advance in the eda and IP business. It is, he believes 'unique in the industry', meshing as it does Tensilica's strengths in assessing a design's system architecture, the functionality, the algorithms needed to run in silicon to accomplish a particular task and how to put all of that together with Cadence's interconnect blocks, design and verification interactions to build the pieces."  Read entire interview here.

See Tensilica in the Cadence Booth at DAC Next Week in Austin

Chris Rowen will be presenting "Goldilocks and the Three Bears of Programmability" in a DAC special session Tuesday 10:30-12.

Steve Roddy will be presenting our new IVP Image/Video processor and Customizable Processor Basics in the Cadence Theater.

And I'll be working the booth near the IP stand. Stop by to play our cool game and win a Samsung tablet or Apple TV. There's a prize for everyone who stops by.

See you there!

See Cadence Fellow Chris Rowen's Presentation on the Tensilica IVP Image/Video Processor

Did you miss Chris' presentation at the Embedded Vision Summit? It's up on YouTube now and you can learn about Porting Applications to High-Performance Imaging DSPs.

See the Tensilica booth at ChipEx 2013 in Israel

Cadence Completes Acquisition of Tensilica

From Cadence's press release:
"Cadence this week completed its previously announced acquisition of Tensilica, Inc., a leader in dataplane processing IP. The cash outlay at closing, after taking into account adjustments for certain costs and an estimated $25 million of cash held by Tensilica at closing, was approximately $326 million. In addition, Cadence assumed certain unvested Tensilica options. Tensilica's configurable dataplane processing units complement industry-standard processor architectures and are optimized for embedded data and signal processing. Tensilica's target markets include mobile wireless, network infrastructure, auto infotainment and home applications. The Tensilica team, led by Jack Guedj, will report to Martin Lund, Cadence's senior vice president of research and development, SOC Realization Group."
See press release.

ComplexIQ Partners with Tensilica for Multimedia over Coax (MoCA) Network Interface

MoCA is becoming the standard for home entertainment networking, including multi-room DVR (digital video recorder), personal content sharing, OTT (over the top) content sharing and IPTV (Internet Protocol Television) applications. Cable, satellite and IPTV suppliers use the MoCA interface to provide multiple streams of HD video, delivering high throughput and high quality service.
See press release.

Inomize Becomes Newest Tensilica Design Center in Israel

“We’re excited to work closely with Tensilica, who is creating a major presence in Israel for many signal processing designs,” stated Udi Shaked, CEO, Inomize. “Tensilica’s ConnX communications DSPs and HiFi audio/voice DSPs are ideal for many companies in Israel doing digital signal processing. Instead of using inflexible, legacy, off-the-shelf DSPs, Tensilica’s customers can customize cores for their exact specifications, letting them run at the lowest power and area while achieving higher performance.  That level of customization is essential for the highly innovative customer base that we serve here in Israel.”  See press release.

Algotochip is Tensilica's Newest Design Center Partner

Algotochip’s patented approach can speed hardware and software design for SOCs in as little as eight weeks. Algotochip guarantees that its SOC meets all the performance specifications made by the customers, and insures that it will be right the first time. See press release.

Tensilica Joins HSA Foundation to Help Establish Standards for Embedded Heterogeneous Computing

Tensilica has joined the HSA (Heterogeneous System Architecture) Foundation, a not-for-profit consortium dedicated to developing architecture specifications that will unlock the performance and power efficiency of parallel computing engines found in many modern devices. Tensilica will contribute its years of experience assisting customers in bringing heterogeneous multicore SoC  designs to market to the development and promotion of standards for parallel computing.
Read press release.

Insightful Article on Cadence Acquisition of Tensilica

"With the existing licensing deals that Tensilica has, Cadence can augment its IP offering. But, potentially, the combination of design tools, in an era where software design is becoming more critical, and the configurable processor concept could bring the sea-of-processors architecture, and the advantages it may bring, just that little bit closer."
Read entire article.

Cadence to Acquire Tensilica

 “With Tensilica, we will be able to provide designers with a more complete SoC solution that will speed the development of innovative and differentiated products, while reducing time to market,” said Lip-Bu Tan, president and chief executive officer of Cadence. “We look forward to working with Tensilica’s dedicated employees as one team to bring even more value to our customers.”
See press release.

MegaChips Completes Design Center Agreement with Tensilica to Enhance R&D and Expand Marketing Collaboration

“Our partnership with Tensilica enables us to procure Tensilica’s outstanding IP cores with ease and accelerate advanced SoC development,” said Gen Sasaki, director, officer and general manager of Division No. 2 at MegaChips. “This lets us deliver superior LSI products with shorter lead times to both domestic and international customers who constantly seek advanced functions.”
See press release.

Tensilica's Gathering Huge Crowds at MWC 2013

We're getting ready to start day 3 at Mobile World Congress. I took this picture during a slow time yesterday. Our booth in Hall 6, stand D101, has three conference rooms, lots of good demos, and strong crowds.  If you're at MWC, be sure to stop by to see:
- Our new imaging demos - image stabilization and HDR capture
- Our complete LTE downlink demo
- As many audio demos as we could fit (we have so many now with strong partners like Sensory and Acoustic Technologies working in our booth)
- The display case full of the latest Smartphones and tablets that include Tensilica cores.

Tensilica and Sensory Drive Industry’s Lowest Power DSP-Based Voice Activation Solution

By utilizing Sensory’s Low Power Speech Detection technology, Tensilica was able to further reduce power to an average of under 25 µW when implemented in a 28 nm HPL process, the lowest power implementation by far in the industry. This makes this joint solution ideal for always-on voice activated smartphones, tablets, appliances and automotive applications.
See press release.

Tensilica and Huawei Expand Strategic Relationship for Next-Generation Products

“For more than four years, we have worked very closely with Tensilica on a number of projects,” stated Teresa He, vice president of HiSilicon. “We have found that Tensilica’s DPUs can help us differentiate our products and achieve competitive advantages in terms of power, performance, and area. Tensilica cores have operated as expected and their support has been superb, enabling us to significantly speed up our development time. We are very pleased to strengthen our relationship with this agreement.”
See press release.

SimpLight Achieves First LTE Modem Silicon Success Using Tensilica’s Complete ATLAS Reference Platform

“By using Tensilica’s LTE ATLAS reference platform, we were able to dramatically reduce our time to market and product development cost,” stated Min Liang, SimpLight’s vice president of R&D. “SL3000 is a multi-mode, multi-core SoC that could support 2G, 3G, 4G and other customized broadband baseband processing. This multi-core programmable platform, combined with Tensilica’s powerful vector DSPs and SimpLight’s proprietary high-performance, multi-threaded microprocessors, is the best balance between performance and power consumption. Our LTE solution based on SL3000 is ready for the IoT test organized by China’s MTNET, the official testing lab in China for mobile wireless communication.”
See press release.

Tensilica to Showcase Complete IP Solutions for Video, Imaging, Audio, Voice, DTV Demodulation and Baseband Communications at Mobile World Congress 2013

“We are very excited to showcase at MWC all of the smartphones and tablets that are using Tensilica for audio/voice, Bluetooth, WiFi and LTE baseband processing,” stated Jack Guedj, Tensilica’s president and CEO. “And with our latest imaging/video DSP (see press release), Tensilica is well positioned to expand our lead as the largest DSP IP supplier.”
See press release.

Tensilica to Demonstrate Fujitsu Smartphone that Uses Multiple Tensilica DPUs Including ConnX BBE DSP and HiFi Audio/Voice at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona

“The ANT30 represents the second generation of integrated 4G LTE and 2G/3G chips that have used Tensilica’s DPUs and DSPs – the first generation has been very successful in the Japanese market,” stated Eric Dewannain, Tensilica’s vice president and general manager of the baseband business unit. “In this second generation, ANT has significantly reduced the power dissipation to increase battery life by employing specifically optimized Tensilica DPU programmable accelerators, in addition to the versatile ConnX BBE DSP. The ANT modem, designed to service the worldwide market due to its software programmability, can quickly adjust to standard evolution or new requirements.”
See press release.

Sensory’s New TrulyHandsfree 3.0 Speaker Verification and Speaker Identification Optimized Port Available on Tensilica HiFi Audio/Voice DSPs

Sensory’s TrulyHandsfree 3.0 technology enables personalization of the user experience by calling up a specific user’s history, preferences and settings. Sensory’s speaker verification technology uses voice biometrics and analysis to authenticate a specific individual. Sensory’s TrulyHandsfree complete set of voice activation and recognition products allow users to access a device with just their voice, bypassing the typical 4-digit number manually entered on the screen for access. See press release.

New mimoOn Library for Tensilica’s Baseband DSP IP Cores Speeds Up LTE and LTE-Advanced Chip Designs

The optimized LTE library works with mimoOn’s mi!SmallCellPHY and mi!MobilePHY reference chains, which are complete solutions for 3GPP standards, ensuring 100 percent alignment with the standards and future-proofing investments. The library includes optimized basic functions such as FFT/IFFT and LTE specific functions such as rate matching, modulators, interleaving, channel estimation, UE sync and MIMO equalization.  The library is complete in that it supports all of the core functions of the reference designs.
Tensilica and mimoOn will jointly demonstrate a low-power, high-performance LTE User Equipment and eNodeB PHY with real-time downlink and uplink traffic at the upcoming Mobile World Congress 2013, February 25-28, in Tensilica’s booth in Hall 6, stand D101 and in mimoOn’s meeting room in Hall 2, stand 2D60. See press release.

Acoustic Technologies Wideband HD Voice Processing Now Available on Tensilica's HiFi Audio DSPs

Acoustic Technologies’ voice processing solution is proven with tier one smartphone vendors, and the world’s largest network operators, to deliver high quality voice performance in handset, speakerphone and headset modes.  The HD multi-mic noise cancellation includes Acoustic’s InstantAdapt feature, dynamic microphone balancing technology and FlexEQ™ equalization to deliver clear speech anywhere.  Wideband voice doubles the sampling rate of narrowband voice to deliver expanded frequency response at both lower and upper ends of the voice spectrum.  The dramatically improved voice quality improves the user experience on mobile networks that have deployed HD voice and for VoIP applications.  The improvements in sound fidelity and clear speech also improve recognition rates in noise for ASR (automatic speech recognition) applications. See press release.

NXP HD Voice Processing Smartphone SW Now Available for Tensilica's HiFi Audio/Voice DSPs

LifeVibes VoiceExperience is HD Voice compliant, and enables natural, comfortable communication over phone networks and IP-based channels such as Skype and Google Talk. It improves the intelligibility of speech, eliminates echoes and distortion, and minimizes stationary and non-stationary background noise (such as traffic or crowds), using one or more microphones.   More information is available at http://www.nxpsoftware.com/products/voiceexperience/.  See press release.

Tensilica's New IVP Imaging/Video DSP Ideal for Mobile Handsets, DTV, Automotive and Computer Vision Applications

Tensilica today unveiled IVP - a product that is ideal for the complex image/video signal processing functions in mobile handsets, tablets, digital televisiosn (DTV), automotive, video games and computer vision based applications. The IVP DPU is a much needed breakthrough product in terms of energy efficiency and performance in current products and to enable applications never before possible in a programmable device.

See the IVP press release.
See the Dream Chip partner press release.
See the Almalence partner press release.
See the Irida Labs partner press release.
See the Morpho partner press release.

Phison Uses Tensilica for NAND Flash Memory Controllers and SSD Applications

 “Tensilica’s DPUs allow us to create highly competitive products that are optimized for our unique flash architectures without compromising the implementation or requiring us to create, verify and maintain algorithm-acceleration offload engines to supplement an inflexible fixed-function control CPU,” said Aw Yong,  President at Phison.  “Moreover, Tensilica’s DPUs have special I/Os that speed data in and out of the processing engine, bypassing the system bus, speeding overall system performance.”  See press release.

TU Dresden Innovates with Tensilica's Xtensa LX4

With assistance from Tensilica, the university team integrated an Xtensa LX4 DSP core to demonstrate the overall power reduction benefits from the combination of a 28nm low power technology, adaptive power management and an advanced processor IP core.

                "Tensilica has had a long-standing relationship with the researchers at TU Dresden and congratulates them on this successful design effort," stated Chris Rowen, Tensilca's CTO. "Tensilica's Xtensa processor is a fundamental building block in TU Dresden's wireless communications architecture, and we are working together to proliferate know-how on configurable architectures to the worldwide design community." See press release.

Waves MaxxAudio Sound-Enhancement Technology Is Now Available for Tensilica HiFi Audio DSP Cores

MaxxAudio incorporates a host of proprietary signal-processing technologies to deliver enhanced, dynamic and immersive sound from the small speakers typically found in many consumer electronics products, with better definition, deeper bass and a more enveloping sound field.

Tomar Elbaz, Executive Vice President of Waves, stated: “Elevating Tensilica’s portfolio with MaxxAudio studio-quality sound enhancement suite further underscores our company’s commitment to providing the highest-quality audio solutions to consumers. Waves signal processing and audio technologies are used by top pros in the recording industry, and now this level of professional-quality sonic improvement will be available in a much wider range of products from top consumer electronics manufacturers.”

See the press release.

Visit Tensilica at CES

Our booth looks great! We're in the LVCC, South Hall, Booth MP25060. I'll probably be sitting out front - Paula

Tensilica Introduces the Smallest, Lowest Power DSP IP Core For Always-Listening Voice Trigger and Voice Recognition

Tensilica 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, Tensilica added efficient16-bit instructions that are optimized for voice and audio codecs. The result is a post-route core that’s only 0.039 mm² in 28 nm HPL. See the press release.