The industry’s first Android technology for a licensed DSP

Developed based on input from the Low Power Android Consortium, the KitKat audio tunneling solution can cut audio processing power by up to 14 times. This enables double mp3 playback time for smartphones. Suitable for use with any of Cadence’s HiFi Audio/Voice DSP IP cores, the Tensilica HiFi Audio Tunneling for Android allows designers to take advantage of over 125 software packages that have been ported to the HiFi architecture by Cadence and more than 55 partners.

Larry Przywara, Director of Audio/Voice IP Marketing, Cadence Design Systems, comments: “With battery life being so critical to smartphones and other mobile devices, the Tensilica HiFi Audio Tunneling for Android is crucial to providing the most power-efficient Android audio solution. Until now, Android devices have had to run audio on the host processor or on an OEM proprietary offload framework that still required the encoded and decoded audio streams to be managed by the host CPU. Cadence, in cooperation with other companies, worked with Google to develop audio tunneling to the DSP in Android to solve this problem. To maximise the value of this feature in the new KitKat release of Android, we’ve developed the Tensilica HiFi Audio Tunneling for Android so that audio processing can now be fully offloaded from the host, significantly reducing power consumption and improving both battery life and time to market.”