Tensilica to demonstrate DSP processor cores

Systems and semiconductor companies will be showcasing products using Tensilica's technology at the exhibition, to be held in Barcelona on 16-19 February.

Many 4G/LTE, Picocell and Femtocell, WiFi, mobile digital radio, and mobile digital television baseband communications system-on-chip (SOC) designs are now in progress based on Tensilica's customisable dataplane processors.

Tensilica's Xtensa customisable dataplane processors are employed by companies for baseband DSP tasks.

Dataplane Processor Units (DPUs) are ideal building blocks for the next generation of high-speed digital radios because they are small, flexible, and can be rapidly customised to provide optimum DSP speed, power, and performance.

Tensilica's DPUs can be used in many applications where general-purpose DSP cores are too slow and custom logic designed with RTL (register transfer level) blocks do not provide enough flexibility and require extensive verification, increasing design risk.

One of Tensilica's baseband DSP customers, Ibiquity Digital, will demonstrate its low-power, portable terrestrial HD radio receiver in a mobile handset accessory format.

The Ibiquity design employs Tensilica processors for both the baseband DSP and audio DSP.

Tensilica's HiFi Audio DSP has been designed into millions of cellular phones and mobile consumer electronic devices.

With the lowest power-consumption of any licensable audio DSP and the largest available library of optimised audio application software, the HiFi audio DSP has been used in mobile applications by five of the top 10 semiconductor companies.

At MWC, Tensilica will demonstrate sound-enhancing audio post-processing software from its partners, SRS Labs and AM3D, running on the HiFi Audio DSP.

Tensilica's 388VDO DSP is a multi-standard SD video DSP that has been employed in several portable devices.

It is fully software programmable, providing the flexibility to support multiple video standards.

Tensilica's Xtensa DPUs are also tailored for video pre-processing for mobile phone camera image signal processing and for video post-processing for image enhancement on both LCD displays and cell phone projectors.

With firmware updates to respond to the array of internet-driven video codecs becoming a common event for the latest generation smart phones and the emergence of apps stores, full-video datapath software programmability offers handset manufacturers another way to engage their customers.

At Mobile World Congress, Tensilica will demonstrate a production video card that employs the 388VDO for programmable multi-format SD video.