Tensilica Adds Ogg Vorbis Decoder to Popular Xtensa HiFi 2 Audio Engine and Diamond 330HiFi Processor Core

Update: Cadence Completes Acquisition of Tensilica (Apr 24, 2013)

Open Source, Royalty Free Ogg Vorbis Format Popular in Video Games and Digital Audio Players

SANTA CLARA, CA, – October 31, 2006 – Tensilica, Inc. today announced that it has added an Ogg Vorbis decoder for its popular Xtensa HiFi 2 Audio Engine and Diamond 330HiFi processor core. The Xtensa HiFi 2 Audio Engine is the most popular audio processor core on the market, designed into devices ranging from cellular phone handsets to prosumer audio. This year, Tensilica’s customers will ship tens of millions of products using the Xtensa HiFi Audio Engine. With this software decoder, the capability to play music encoded in the Ogg Vorbis format can be added to any chip that includes the Xtensa HiFi 2 Audio Engine. The Ogg Vorbis format is increasingly popular in video games and digital audio players because it is open source and royalty free.

“By adding this Ogg Vorbis decoder, we now have 19 encoders and decoders available for our Xtensa HiFi 2 Audio Engine,” stated Larry Przywara, director of strategic alliances for Tensilica. “Most of our customers employ multiple music formats, and the large breadth of codec support will ensure that the products they build will be able to support any audio files.”

Ogg Vorbis support is on the rise because it delivers higher audio fidelity and because the standard is open and freely available without patents or royalties, making it a suitable replacement candidate for patented audio coding formats like MP3. More information on the Ogg Vorbis audio compression format is available at www.vorbis.com.

The Xtensa HiFi 2 Audio Engine uses 24-bit audio processing, giving it inherent advantages over common 16-bit audio processors in use today. It provides superior sound quality of compressed files due to the increased precision available for intermediate calculations in the compression and decompression algorithms.

Because it is fully programmable, multiple audio standards can run on the same hardware. Tensilica offers 19 audio packages for the Xtensa HiFi 2 Audio Engine, including:

Dolby® Digital AC-3 Decoder
Dolby Digital AC-3 Encoder
Dolby Digital Plus Consumer Decoder
QSound™ microQ™
MP3 Decoder
MP3 Encoder
MPEG-4 aacPlus™ v2 Decoder
MPEG-4 aacPlus™ v2 Encoder
MPEG-4 aacPlus™ v1 Decoder
MPEG-4 aacPlus™ v1 Encoder
MPEG-2/4 AAC LC Decoder
MPEG-2/4 AAC LC Encoder
Ogg Vorbis Decoder
SONiVOX Sound that Rocks
SRS WOW XT™ and Xspace 3D™
WMA Decoder
WMA Encoder
AMR Narrowband Speech Codec
AMR Wideband Speech Codec

Pricing and Availability

The Ogg Vorbis decoder is available now for all licensees of Tensilica’s Diamond Standard 330HiFi or the Xtensa HiFi 2 Audio Engine. Pricing starts at $15,000 for a single project license.

About Tensilica

Tensilica offers the broadest line of controller, CPU and specialty DSP processors on the market today, in both an off-the-shelf format via the Diamond Standard Series cores and with full designer configurability with the Xtensa processor family. Tensilica’s low-power, benchmark proven processors have been designed into high-volume products at industry leaders in the digital consumer, networking and telecommunications markets. All Tensilica processor cores are complete with a matching software development tool environment, portfolio of system simulation models, and hardware implementation tool support. For more information on Tensilica's patented approach to the creation of application-specific building blocks for SOC design, visit www.tensilica.com.