Coreworks' announces Stereo and Multi-Channel Configurable Serial Audio Transceivers targeted for next generation broadcasting and digital TV products

Corework’s family of Configurable Multi-Channel Serial Audio Interfaces supports audio devices from a multitude of IC manufacturers and frees designers from vendor dependence while accelerating time-to-market

Lisbon, Portugal -- january 7, 2009 — Coreworks S.A., a leading provider of audio and DSP engines, today announced the introduction of two new IP blocks for use in a broad range of applications ranging from consumer to professional audio equipments: the stereo (I2S, Left/Right Justifed) and multi-channel (TDM) configurable serial audio transceiver cores. Traditionally chip designers implement these relatively simple interface blocks in-house. However, designers normally do not have time to add configuration options and end up stuck with a few audio IC suppliers. Moreover, it is not uncommon for these interfaces to have three distinct clock domains: front-end audio, backend data and backend control interfaces. This fact further complicates and delays the design process with a negative impact on the time-to-market.

“Designers are looking for silicon-proven IPs and are finding Coreworks’ solutions to meet their application and form factor requirements. Nowadays even the simplest components can be sold and bought as semiconductor IP. IC designers who do not learn to integrate and manage internally a diversified range of third party IP blocks will soon face extinction. Buying only standard processors, memories and interfaces, and using a DIY approach and EDA tools to do everything else in-house has become old-fashioned. Coreworks ability to address a broad range of applications by offering different flavors of our cores is a key factors in our customer selection criteria.” said, Jose de Sousa, Coreworks CEO.

TDM-pro (CWda26) and I2S-premier (CWda27) are, respectively, Coreworks’ multi-channel and stereo digital audio transceiver cores offering support for a range of audio applications. These cores can be reconfigured at run time to support a different audio format for reception or transmission. TDM-pro and I2S-premier are designed to support all common audio sample rates from 8 to 192KHz width sample widths ranging from 8 to 32 bits. These IP blocks feature an internal asynchronous FIFO, supporting up to 3 different clock domains: front-end audio, backend data (AMBA AHB) and backend control interfaces (AMBA APB). The CoreConnect™ bus interface or a plain parallel interface with REQ/ACK signals can also be supplied in lieu of the AMBA® interface. These cores work both as master or slave devices. TDM-pro is designed for multi-channel operation supporting up to 128 channels. In the TDM in I2S mode 128 stereo channels (i.e. 256 audio channels can be transmitted). I2S-premier is designed for systems requiring support for all kinds of stereo serial formats.

Coreworks offers other industry standard interfaces, such as SPDIF, AES/EBU, AES3 or IEC60958 standards for system-to-system PCM audio transmission, and also the IEC61937 or SMPTE 337M standards and more. In addition Coreworks offers a line of audio asynchronous sample rate converters for various resolutions.

The Coreworks’ family of IP building blocks is offered for both FPGAs and ASICs. For more information please visit www.coreworks-sa.com

About Coreworks®

Coreworks® S.A. was founded in 2001 in Lisbon, Portugal and is a leading provider of high-performance, reconfigurable HW/SW DSP solutions for multi-standard communications and multimedia applications. Coreworks’ IPs have been instigated in a wide variety of products, and in various process geometries. Coreworks’ solutions alleviate S/W algorithm bottlenecks of many demanding audio, video and communication applications by efficiently partitioning the signal processing algorithms between the host processor and Coreworks SideWorks™, eliminating the need for expensive and power hungry DSP devices or multi-processor alternatives.