April 16, 2012 -- CEVA, Inc. today introduced the CEVA-TeakLite-4, a powerful, low-power and scalable 32-bit DSP architecture framework for advanced audio and voice applications.The CEVA-TeakLite-4 was specifically designed to address the increasingly complex requirements of voice pre-processing and audio post-processing algorithms as well as multi-channel audio codecs, for smartphones, mobile computing and digital home devices.

Built on the proven foundation of the CEVA-TeakLite family, the CEVA-TeakLite-4 introduces new smart-power-management technology and supports user-owned extensions, making it a highly flexible architecture and ideal for even the most area- and power-sensitive designs. Illustrating this, the CEVA-TeakLite-4 consumes up to 25% less die area and requires up to 30% less power than the previous generation CEVA-TeakLite-III DSP for decoding MP3 with Dolby Mobile 3+ post-processing.

The 32-bit CEVA-TeakLite-4 DSP architecture directly addresses the significant challenges faced by the semiconductor industry in enabling high-quality audio and voice performance in all types of devices. To deliver better voice intelligibility in noisy environments for example, advanced pre-processing technologies reduce the background noise and improve voice clarity, requiring support for computational-intensive algorithms. Likewise, the transition to wideband voice codecs for voice-over-LTE (VoLTE) and voice-over-IP (VoIP) applications requires significantly more DSP horsepower than traditional narrowband voice codecs used today. And in mobile and home entertainment devices, audio post-processing creates a vastly-improved consumer experience, delivering virtual surround sound, speaker correction, bass expansion effects, and more. The processing required to deliver this level of performance is significantly more complex than what can be efficiently achieved with 16-bit and 24-bit DSPs utilized today, bringing 32-bit audio processing to the forefront.

Eran Briman, Vice President of Marketing at CEVA comented, "In architecting the CEVA-TeakLite-4, we built upon the knowledge and experience gained in the last five years from our first-generation 32-bit audio processors to significantly improve the performance and power efficiency of our new architecture. As a result, the CEVA-TeakLite-4 architecture can address the specific requirements of any advanced audio and voice enabled SOC through a choice of scalable and flexible DSPs, which share a common instruction set architecture, software ecosystem and tool set. Furthermore, the integration of our second-generation PSU 2.0 smart power-management technology enables the CEVA-TeakLite-4 architecture to deliver the lowest power-consumption package possible, for each specific application."

The CEVA-TeakLite-4 architecture is initially available as a series of four compatible DSP cores, offering designers a range of application-specific cost/ performance alternatives to meet their application requirements. The CEVA-TL410 and CEVA-TL411 DSPs offer single and dual 32x32-bit multipliers, respectively, targeting voice and audio codecs and hubs, while the CEVA-TL420 and CEVA-TL421 DSPs offer additional fully cached memory subsystems and AXI system interfaces, targeting application processors and home audio SOCs. With a variable 10-stage pipeline, the CEVA-TeakLite-4 architecture scales from an area-optimized implementation of less than 100K gates and ultra-low power consumption, up to a 1.5-GHz implementation at 28nm for high-end SOCs. All CEVA-TeakLite-4 DSPs leverage CEVA's second-generation Power Scaling Unit (PSU 2.0) which dynamically supports clock and voltage scaling with finer granularity within the processor, memories, buses and system resources.

Following on from industry-proven CEVA-TeakLite-III DSP, The CEVA-TeakLite-4 is the second-generation 32-bit DSP architecture from CEVA, and the fourth-generation DSP overall that shares the foundations of the CEVA-TeakLite DSP architecture. The CEVA-TeakLite-4 is fully compatible with every previous generation of the CEVA-TeakLite, ensuring that the full portfolio of voice and audio codecs optimized for the CEVA-TeakLite architecture runs on the CEVA-TeakLite-4 with improved efficiency. By taking advantage of a unified development infrastructure composed of code-compatible cores, a set of optimized software libraries and a single tool chain, users can significantly reduce software development costs while leveraging their software investment in future products.

The CEVA-TeakLite-4 DSPs are supported by CEVA-Toolbox, a complete software development environment, enabling the entire architecture to be programmed in C-level. An integrated simulator provides accurate and efficient verification of the entire system including the memory sub-systems. In addition, CEVA-Toolbox includes libraries, a graphical debugger, and a complete optimization tool chain named CEVA Application Optimizer. The Application Optimizer enables automatic and manual optimization applied in the C source code.

Availability

The first members of the CEVA-TeakLite-4 DSP family will be generally available for licensing in Q2 and Q3 of this year.