Edinburgh fabless chip firm Wolfson has introduced a stand-alone Tensilica DSP with a suite of audio software for phones, tablets and TVs.
Called WM0010, the 200Mips processor has a 24bit data path and 32bit fixed point data engine, plus memory and interfaces including SPI, TDM, and I2C.
"Tensilica can be found on baseband processors and system chips. I believe we are the only people to offer Tensilica stand-alone," Wolfson chief commercial officer Andy Brannan told Electronics Weekly.
In a smart phone, claims Wolfson, the DSP can offer MP3 decode for 16mW, including dissipation within an associated DAC and earpiece driver chip from the firm.
"We bring to the party two sets of software: an open source modification of the Linux stack for the host microcontroller, and algorithms for the DSP itself which are priced separately," said Brannan.
Wolfson is active in the open-source world and is actually the 'owner' of the embedded audio framework within Linux' kernel.
Audio algorithms for the Tensilica architecture are also available from Tensilica and third-party suppliers, and designers can write their own.
What applications are envisaged?
"There is a lot of call for pre and post audio enhancement in smartphones and tablets, and beam-forming and echo cancellation for video conferencing and Skype on TVs and tablets," said Brannan.
Wolfson has transmit noise cancellation and acoustic echo cancellation algorithms both claimed to cut noise by up to 32dB.
WM0010 is sampling now in a 4x3.4mm W-CSP package.