Multicore audio DSP supports high definition audio standards

DSP, Micros & Memory

4 April 2007 DSP, Micros & Memory

Responding to the demand for increased memory and performance in advanced audio applications, Freescale Semiconductor unveiled at the 2007 International Consumer Electronics Show, two digital signal processing (DSP) chips that are designed to support multiple high definition (HD) audio standards.

The Symphony DSP56720 and DSP56721 dual-core DSPs represent the first offerings in the company's family of multicore 24-bit audio processors.

"With the introduction of our first multicore audio DSPs, Freescale is expanding our award-winning Symphony DSP portfolio for home entertainment, automotive and professional audio applications," said Berardino Baratta, general manager, Multimedia Applications Division at Freescale. "The performance demands of audio have increased exponentially over the past five years, and we believe this new line of multicore DSPs will drive next generation products that provide unprecedented user experiences, such as Blu-Ray and HD-DVD players, A/V receivers, guitar amplifiers and more."

"New, high-definition audio standards, which will be incorporated into consumer products in the near future, will require more processing power than a single DSP can reasonably provide," notes Morry Marshall, vice president of strategic technologies, Semico. "Freescale's multicore DSP family provides the performance needed while simplifying design, lowering time-to-market and reducing costs for many systems that would otherwise require multiple DSPs."

Multicores meet higher data performance requirements

The Symphony single-chip audio IC solutions include two DSP cores, on-chip memory and a rich set of peripherals. They were designed using dual DSP56300 24-bit cores, which handle both the latest decoding standards and advanced post-processing on the same chip. Each core operates at 200 MIPs with a 200 MHz clock. This allows the chip to meet the high performance requirements of many audio applications including HD audio standards such as DTS-HD, Dolby Digital+ and Dolby TrueHD.

Many of today's high performance audio products use multichip DSP implementations. With these multicore audio DSPs, the need for a multichip solution is eliminated, significantly reducing board space and the cost of the design.

Code compatible with Freescale's existing 24-bit DSP solutions, the Symphony DSP56720 and DSP56721 enable customers to migrate quickly and easily to a higher performance solution. Both multicore DSPs incorporate the same plug-and-play software architecture that exists in the Freescale DSP563xx family and support not just the standard audio decoders but also enable flexibility and customisation of post processing algorithms.

The Symphony audio DSP56720 and DSP56721 multicore audio DSPs are targeted at consumer, professional audio and automotive applications that require high performance for audio processing.

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Multicore audio DSP supports high definition audio standards

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