Synaptics Incorporated (Nasdaq: SYNA) today introduced the xMCU, a new class of microcontrollers that runs multimodal Edge AI, with the launch of the Synaptics Astra SR200 Series. Unlike conventional MCUs constrained by limited on-chip memory and compute, the xMCU combines heterogeneous, AI-native compute and acceleration with integrated high-bandwidth custom DRAM scalable to hundreds of megabytes, enabling larger AI models and richer multimodal workloads to run entirely on-device. The Astra SR200 Series of xMCUs is designed for the next generation of AI wearables, battery-powered sensing devices, connected cameras, streamers, and industrial vision and voice systems.

The SR200 Series is powered by the Synaptics Torq AI engine, which brings a standards-based hardware architecture and unified developer experience featuring the Coral NPU from Google Research. It also comes with the industry's first pairing of the Arm Cortex -M85 and Cortex -M52. Together with integrated vision and audio capabilities and hardware-rooted security, the SR200 Series brings unmatched system design efficiency and cost benefits to Edge and Physical AI designs.

Cadence (Nasdaq: CDNS) today announced the Cadence Tensilica Hi-fi iQ DSP IP, the sixth generation of its highly successful Hi-fi DSP family, based on a new architecture purpose-built for next-generation voice AI and emerging immersive audio. As these applications proliferate in the home entertainment, automotive infotainment and smartphone markets, the Hi-fi iQ DSP delivers the performance and energy efficiency required to meet growing SoC computational demands. Compared to the industry-leading Tensilica Hi-fi 5s DSP, the Hi-fi iQ DSP offers 2X greater compute performance, 8X higher AI performance and more than 25% energy savings for most workloads—delivering over 40% performance uplift on numerous audio codecs.

"With the increased growth of AI across virtually every facet of the industry, audio and language have become critical interfaces for users," said Anshel Sag, VP and principal analyst, Moor Insights and Strategy. "The AI performance and energy savings with Cadence's new flagship Tensilica Hi-fi iQ DSP position it to enable future AI-enhanced applications and offload processing from other IPs."

Next-generation consumer and automotive audio is becoming increasingly sophisticated, and market drivers such as generative AI-based audio processing, immersive soundscapes, and advanced infotainment in software-defined vehicles demand stepped-up audio DSP performance. However, a single DSP can no longer meet escalating compute needs, while multiple DSPs pose significant programming challenges.

Today, OEMs and SoC vendors must perform all multicore hardware design and software development on their own while facing increased time-to-market pressures. At the same time, programmers are grappling with the complexity of software-based synchronization of shared memory regions and the proper partitioning of tasks across the multicore cluster. This can result in designs falling short of performance expectations.

Cadence today announced the Cadence Tensilica NeuroEdge 130 AI Co-Processor (AICP), a new class of processor designed to complement any neural processing unit (NPU) and enable end-to-end execution of the latest agentic and physical AI networks on advanced automotive, consumer, industrial and mobile SoCs. Based on the proven architecture of the highly successful Tensilica Vision DSP family, the NeuroEdge 130 AICP delivers more than 30% area savings and over 20% savings in dynamic power and energy without impacting performance. It also leverages the same software, AI compilers, libraries and frameworks to deliver faster time to market. Multiple customer engagements are currently underway, and customer interest is strong.

"With the rapid proliferation of AI processing in physical AI applications such as autonomous vehicles, robotics, drones, industrial automation and healthcare, NPUs are assuming a more critical role," said Karl Freund, founder and principal analyst of Cambrian AI Research. "Today, NPUs handle the bulk of the computationally intensive AI/ML workloads, but a large number of non-MAC layers include pre- and post-processing tasks that are better offloaded to specialized processors. However, current CPU, GPU and DSP solutions involve tradeoffs, and the industry needs a low-power, high-performance solution that is optimized for co-processing and allows future proofing for rapidly evolving AI processing needs."

EAR Micro and Klipsch Audio proudly announce the launch of T10 Bespoke Ear Computers at the Motorlux Event, Monterey Jet Center, August 18-19, 2022, to coincide with the 71st Concours D'Elegance.

T10 Bespoke represents an entirely new category of advanced hearables technology—tiny in-ear computers about a third of the size of traditional wireless earphones, yet significantly more advanced. T10 Bespoke Ear Computers seamlessly blend high-style luxury materials and hand craftsmanship typical of fine jewelry and watchmaking with state-of-the-art wireless hi-fi audio. The audio signal path boasts a stunning 96kHz/24-bit audio resolution rendered through the LDAC codec, further enhanced by twin Cadence/Tensilica Hi-fi DSP's, passed next through ultra-efficient class-D amplifiers, and finally into your ears through acoustically accurate Sonion precision balanced-armature transducers.

Positional audio, like Socialism, follows a cycle of glamorization and investment every few years. Back in 2011-12 when AMD maintained a relatively stronger position in the discrete GPU market, and held GPGPU superiority, it gave a lot of money to GenAudio and Tensilica to co-develop the TrueAudio technology, a GPU-accelerated positional audio DSP, which had a whopping four game title implementations, including and limited to "Thief," "Star Citizen," "Lichdom: Battlemage," and "Murdered: Soul Suspect." The TrueAudio Next DSP which debuted with "Polaris," introduced GPU-accelerated "audio ray-casting" technology, which assumes that audio waves interact differently with different surfaces, much like light; and hence positional audio could be made more realistic. There were a grand total of zero takers for TrueAudio Next. Riding on the presumed success of its RTX technology, NVIDIA wants to develop audio ray-tracing further.

A very curious sentence caught our eye in NVIDIA's micro-site for Turing. The description of RT cores reads that they are specialized components that "accelerate the computation of how light and sound travel in 3D environments at up to 10 Giga Rays per second." This is an ominous sign that NVIDIA is developing a full-blown positional audio programming model that's part of RTX, with an implementation through GameWorks. Such a technology, like TrueAudio Next, could improve positional audio realism by treating sound waves like light and tracing their paths from their origin (think speech from an NPC in a game), to the listener as the sound bounces off the various surfaces in the 3D scene. Real-time ray-tracing(-ish) has captured the entirety of imagination at NVIDIA marketing to the extent that it is allegedly willing to replace "GTX" with "RTX" in its GeForce GPU nomenclature. We don't mean to doomsay emerging technology, but 20 years of development in positional audio has shown that it's better left to game developers to create their own technology that sounds somewhat real; and that initiatives from makers of discrete sound cards (a device on the brink of extinction) and GPUs makers bore no fruit.

Tensilica, Inc. today announced that it 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 (system-on-chip) designs to market to the development and promotion of standards for parallel computing.

"Tensilica is a long-established leader in multicore technology, delivering unique solutions that enable both control plane and compute-intensive dataplane functions," stated Steve Roddy, Tensilica's vice president of product marketing and business development. "Tensilica customers today use multiple Tensilica processors for diverse functions such as audio offload, wireless baseband, image processing and general purpose control. We welcome the efforts and ambitions of the HSA to bring standards to the market that will greatly facilitate innovation in embedded applications."

Tensilica, Inc. today announced that VIA has selected Tensilica's Xtensa dataplane processors (DPUs) for a system-on-chip (SOC) design for solid state drives (SSDs). After conducting a technical evaluation, VIA determined that Tensilica's DPUs provide over four times the performance of competing processors on key algorithms used to benchmark competitive alternatives.

SSDs require faster and more efficient data management and manipulation to increase their throughput (measured in Input/Output Operations per Second, or IOPS). With conventional processors, increasing the clock speed is the common way to increase performance. However, this increases energy consumption and die size, especially as speeds increase so much that designers are forced to move to more complex multi-core solutions.