Tensilica
 | This article contains promotional content. (August 2015) |
 | |
| Company type | Subsidiary |
|---|---|
| Industry | Semiconductor intellectual property core |
| Founded | 1997 |
| Fate | Acquired by Cadence Design Systems in 2013 |
| Headquarters | San Jose, California |
Key people | Chris Rowen, Jack Guedj |
| Products | Microprocessors, HiFi audio, DSP cores |
| Website | ip |
Tensilica Inc. was a company based in Silicon Valley developing semiconductor intellectual property (SIP) cores, and is a part of Cadence Design Systems since 2013.
The company offers digital signal processor (DSP) SIPs. These cores range from audio-, image-signal to baseband processors.[citation needed]
Tensilica was founded in 1997 by Chris Rowen. It employed Earl Killian as the director of architecture.[1] The company was acquired by Cadence Design Systems in April 2013 with approximately $326 million.[2]
Products
[edit] | This section may contain excessive or inappropriate references to self-published sources. (November 2024) |
Cadence Tensilica develops SIP blocks to be included on the chip (IC) designs of products of their licensees, such as system on a chip for embedded systems. Tensilica processors are delivered as synthesizable RTL to aid integration with other chips.
Xtensa configurable cores
[edit]Xtensa processors range from small, low-power cache-less microcontroller to more performance-oriented SIMD processors, multiple-issue VLIW DSP cores, and neural network processors.[citation needed] Cadence standard DSPs are based on the Xtensa architecture.[citation needed] The architecture offers a user-customizable instruction set through automated customization tools that can extend the base instruction set, including and not limited to, addition of new SIMD instructions and register files.[3]
Xtensa instruction set
[edit]The Xtensa instruction set is a 32-bit architecture with a compact 16- and 24-bit instruction set. The base instruction set has 82 RISC instructions and includes a 32-bit ALU, 16 general-purpose 32-bit registers, and one special-purpose register.[4]
Audio and voice DSP IP
[edit]
| This section contains promotional content. (November 2024) |
- HiFi Mini Audio DSP — A small low power DSP core for voice triggering and voice recognition[5]
- HiFi 2 Audio DSP — DSP core for low power MP3 audio processing[6]
- HiFi EP Audio DSP — A superset of HiFi 2 with optimizations for DTS Master Audio, voice pre- and post-processing, and cache management[7]
- HiFi 3 Audio DSP — 32-bit DSP for audio enhancement algorithms, wideband voice codecs, and multi-channel audio[8]
- HiFi 3z Audio DSP — For lower-powered audio, wideband voice codecs, and neural-network-based speech recognition.[9]
- HiFi 4 DSP - Higher performance DSP for applications such as multi-channel object-based audio standards.[10]
- HiFi 5 DSP - For digital assistants, infotainment, and voice-controlled products.[11]
Vision DSPs
[edit]- Vision P5 and P6 DSP.[12][13][self-published source?]
- Vision C5 DSP, for neural network computational tasks.[14][self-published source?]
Adoption
[edit]- AMD TrueAudio, available in select GPU products based on the GCN2 microarchitecture, integrates an HiFi EP Audio DSP on-die.[15] Hardware integration of the DSP is dropped since GCN4, with TrueAudio Next switching to a GPGPU-based approach.[16]
- Microsoft HoloLens incorporates a custom coprocessor fabricated on TSMC's 28nm process node, integrating 24 Tensilica DSP cores. It has around 65 million logic gates, 8 MB of SRAM, and 1 GB of low-power DDR3 RAM.[17]
- Espressif ESP8266 and ESP32 Wi-Fi IoT SoCs use respectively the "Diamond Standard 106Micro" (by Espressif referred to as "L106")[18] and the LX6.[19]
- Spreadtrum, licensing the HiFi DSP.[20][self-published source?]
- VIA Technologies, using the HiFi DSP in an embedded SoC.[21][self-published source?]
- Realtek standardized on the HiFi audio DSP for mobile and PC products.[22][self-published source?]
History
[edit]- In 1997, Tensilica was founded by Chris Rowen.
- Five years later, Tensilica released support for flexible length instruction encodings, known as FLIX.
- By 2013, Cadence Design Systems acquired 100% of Tensilica.
Company name
[edit]The brand name Tensilica is a combination of the word Tensile and Silica, with the latter referring to silicon, the building blocks of modern integrated circuits.[citation needed]
References
[edit]- ^ "S-1 Supercomputer Alumni". Retrieved 2019-02-22.
Most recently he was chief architect at Tensilica working on configurable/extensible processors.
- ^ Source: http://ip.cadence.com/news/432/330/Cadence-Reports-First-Quarter-2013-Financial-Results-and-Completes-Acquisition-of-Tensilica
- ^ https://0x04.net/~mwk/doc/xtensa.pdf §1.2.2
- ^ https://0x04.net/~mwk/doc/xtensa.pdf Chapter 3 "Core Architecture"
- ^ "Tensilica Introduces the Smallest, Lowest Power DSP IP Core For Always-Listening Voice Trigger and Voice Recognition". design-reuse.com. Retrieved 2024-03-05.
- ^ "Tensilica HiFi 2 Audio DSP Supports HE AAC by Dolby in Digital Radio Mondiale; Now Offers Decoders for All Major International Digital Radio Standards". design-reuse.com. Retrieved 2024-03-05.
- ^ "Tensilica Introduces HiFi EP DSP Core for High Quality Audio in Home Entertainment and Smartphone Applications". design-reuse.com. Retrieved 2024-03-05.
- ^ "Tensilica's HiFi 3 DSP IP Core Provides Over 1.5x Better Performance for Audio Post Processing and Voice in Smartphones and Home Entertainment". 2012-01-11. Retrieved 2024-03-05.
- ^ "Tensilica HiFi 3z DSP IP Core Provides Enhanced Voice and Audio Processing". circuitcellar.com. 2017-07-28. Retrieved 2024-03-05.
- ^ "Cadence Announces Fourth Generation Tensilica HiFi DSP Architecture". prnewswire.com. 2015-01-06. Retrieved 2024-03-05.
- ^ "HiFi 5 DSP". cadence.com. Cadence. Retrieved 4 October 2023.
- ^ "New Cadence Tensilica Vision P5 DSP Enables 4K Mobile Imaging with 13X Performance Boost and 5X Lower Energy".
- ^ "Cadence Announces New Tensilica Vision P6 DSP Targeting Embedded Neural Network Applications".
- ^ "Cadence Unveils Industry's First Neural Network DSP IP for Automotive, Surveillance, Drone and Mobile Markets".
- ^ "Everything You Wanted to Know About AMD TrueAudio". Maximum PC. 2013-10-08. Archived from the original on July 11, 2014. Retrieved 2014-07-06.
- ^ "TrueAudio Next". AMD GPUOpen. Retrieved 2024-11-11.
- ^ "Microsoft's HoloLens secret sauce: A 28nm customized 24-core DSP engine built by TSMC". The Register.
- ^ "ESP8266EX Datasheet" (PDF). October 2020. Retrieved 2021-03-23.
- ^ "ESP32 SeriesDatasheet" (PDF). 2021-03-19. Retrieved 2021-03-23.
- ^ "Spreadtrum Licenses Tensilica HiFi Audio/Voice DSP".
- ^ "Customer Spotlight: VIA Technologies Licenses Cadence Tensilica HiFi Audio/Voice DSP".
- ^ "Realtek Licenses Cadence's Tensilica HiFi Audio/Voice DSP IP Core".