Tensilica

Tensilica


330Hifi

Targets: Audio

Tensilica 330Hifi Block Diagram

The 330HiFi core targets digital audio processing. Pre-ported audio codecs for the 330HiFi core makes it a "drop-in" block for any SoC application requiring high quality, 24-bit audio capability. The alternatives to the 330HiFi include running codecs on a standard RISC core, or designing custom hardware to the specification of the codec itself. A standard RISC core is the most flexible and provides the best time to market, but it consumes the most power of the alternatives. Conversely, the custom hardware approach would consume the least power, but is inflexible and incurs a long design cycle. The 330HiFi core compromises with a performance level that approaches the hard-wired codec, while keeping the flexibility and post-silicon programmability of a standard RISC core.

Specialized audio instructions designed into the 330HiFi increase code density (thereby reducing memory requirements) and reduce MHz requirements (lowering power). Techniques used to define these custom instructions include SIMD (single instruction, multiple data) parallelization, VLIW (very long instruction word) multiple operations per cycle, and flexible data path widths to reduce power. All of these advanced processor techniques are pre-built into the Diamond 330HiFi hardware, and the codecs supplied by Tensilica utilize this.