TI's New Audio DSP Systems Offers OEMs 3x the Performance of Existing Solutions and Delivers the Industry's First Open Audio Framework
TI's New 32-/64-Bit Floating Point Design Enables OEMs to Provide a More Life-Like Listening Experience to the Home
HOUSTON (Sept. 17, 2001) - Delivering the highest-performing audio solution for the home entertainment market, Texas Instruments Incorporated (TI) (NYSE:TXN) today unveiled a new system that includes a 32-/64-bit floating point digital signal processor (DSP) and an optimized audio software framework. The open, scalable design, which offers three times the performance of current solutions, will enable manufacturers to quickly get to market with audio/video receivers that offer a more life-like listening experience and advanced audio features. (See www.ti.com/sc/pa0917nr)
Consumers are demanding life-like sound quality and more features in home entertainment products. To deliver this, manufacturers need to offer more channels, higher sampling rates, greater arithmetic precision and a breadth of multi-channel digital audio formats. To win in the market, manufacturers must have access to silicon and software that delivers higher performance, greater flexibility and facilitate the differentiation of products.
3X the Performance for Higher Quality and More Features
Only TI's new TMS320DA61x™ DSP generation enables manufacturers to quickly and cost-effectively deliver products that meet consumer expectations. At 225 megahertz (MHz), the first device in this generation - the TMS320DA610™ DSP - offers the highest performance available in the audio industry with 1800 million instructions per second (MIPS) or 1200 million floating-point operations per second (MFLOPS). This unmatched performance is three times that of current designs. Manufacturers will now be able to provide consumers with a full suite of high-quality surround sound content such as Dolby Digital™, DTS™ and THX™, and still have headroom to add additional effects processing and other enhancements. Texas Instruments also is currently working with Lucasfilm THX to include the full post-processing power of THX's new Ultra2 specification, available to qualified THX licensees.
Until now, these enhancements have only been available on high-end audio receivers. They can include:
- Multi digital zones, which allow listeners to play a DVD in one room and another digital multi-channel audio source in a different room through the same receiver;
- Speaker virtualization, which lets listeners add speakers virtually without cluttering a room thus enjoying a more robust listening experience;
- Automatic room correction, which adjusts speaker parameters and equalizes room response to maximize the audio presentation despite room size or speaker placement limitations; and
- Access to additional or new formats that operate at higher sampling rates or provide extra channels for a more life-like audio experience.
"We believe TI's new system solution will enable our customers to continue to push the envelope of the digital audio experience," said Brent Butterworth, Director of Consumer Technology Marketing at Dolby. "This solution - offering the complete suite of Dolby standards - will only accelerate the adoption of our technologies across all segments of the audio market."
Through technologies like DTS 96/24, we continue to raise the bar for a 'high quality' digital audio experience," said Jon Kirchner, President and COO of DTS, Inc. "The performance and flexibility of TI's new audio DSP and software framework now make it very easy for OEMs to integrate the full range of DTS technologies and deliver this experience to consumers."
The DA61x™ DSP generation is based on the proven silicon and tools of the code-compatible TMS320C6000™ DSP platform, featuring peripherals such as a 32-bit external memory interface (EMIF), two I2C ports and a 16-channel enhanced direct memory access (EDMA). The DA610™ DSP also features two new multi-channel audio serial ports (McASPs) that allow up to 12 stereo channels of I2S per port. These ports are also compatible with the Sony/Phillips digital interface (S/PDIF) standard.
The new audio system leverages TI's massive investment in the industry-leading C6000™ DSP platform, which includes more than 12 devices accounting for $3 billion in design-ins. Today, millions of code compatible C6000 devices are being shipped to more than 10,000 programmers around the world.
Software Framework Offers Plug-and-Play Environment
These highly integrated technologies are seamlessly combined with an audio software framework that is accessible through TI's easy-to-use Code Composer Studio™ Integrated Development Environment (IDE). This creates a virtual plug-and-play environment for the highly optimized audio algorithms such as Dolby, DTS and THX. With this difficult integration already complete, manufacturers can dedicate their engineering time and dollars to developing new value-added features that differentiate their products and get them to market more quickly.
By designing with the DA61x DSP system, manufacturers will also realize savings via a reduced bill of materials. The current high-performance audio systems on the market generally feature one DSP for decoding, one DSP for post processing, one I2S Interface chip, a microcontroller and external ROM and RAM. TI integrates all of these onto a single-chip system while offering the ability to add more features and decode more channels. For manufacturers, this translates into lower cost and smaller on-chip real estate - both of which add up to savings that can be passed on to the consumer.
Best-In-Class Partners
TI has collaborated with Momentum Data Systems (MDS), an established and respected supplier of signal processing sub-systems and design support services for audio applications. MDS offers systems expertise in digital and analog design. It also develops software for audio applications such as surround-sound decoding modules and high-quality multichannel audio.
"We are very excited about our new partnership with Texas Instruments," said Jerry Purcell, chief executive officer of MDS. "Together we will offer audio OEMs an unmatched combination of performance, flexibility and systems-level expertise, all of which they need to deliver a truly realistic audio experience."
Through the new TMS320DA61x DSP generation, TI has rounded out its audio portfolio, which includes DSP and analog products in the digital speaker, internet audio, professional and digital radio markets.
Audio development kits are available today. See www.ti.com/sc/pa0917nr for more information.
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