Tensilica Inc. was a company based in Silicon Valley developing semiconductor intellectual property (SIP) cores, and is a part of Cadence Design Systems since 2013.

Tensilica Inc.
Company typeSubsidiary
IndustrySemiconductor intellectual property core
Founded1997
FateAcquired by Cadence Design Systems in 2013
HeadquartersSan Jose, California
Key people
Chris Rowen, Jack Guedj
ProductsMicroprocessors, HiFi audio, DSP cores
Websiteip.cadence.com

The company offers digital signal processor (DSP) SIPs. These cores range from audio-, image-signal to baseband processors.[citation needed]

Tensilica was founded in 1997 by Chris Rowen. It employed Earl Killian as the director of architecture.[1] The company was acquired by Cadence Design Systems in April 2013 with approximately $326 million.[2]

Products

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Cadence Tensilica develops SIP blocks to be included on the chip (IC) designs of products of their licensees, such as system on a chip for embedded systems. Tensilica processors are delivered as synthesizable RTL to aid integration with other chips.

Xtensa configurable cores

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Xtensa processors range from small, low-power cache-less microcontroller to more performance-oriented SIMD processors, multiple-issue VLIW DSP cores, and neural network processors.[citation needed] Cadence standard DSPs are based on the Xtensa architecture.[citation needed] The architecture offers a user-customizable instruction set through automated customization tools that can extend the base instruction set, including and not limited to, addition of new SIMD instructions and register files.[3]

Xtensa instruction set

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The Xtensa instruction set is a 32-bit architecture with a compact 16- and 24-bit instruction set. The base instruction set has 82 RISC instructions and includes a 32-bit ALU, 16 general-purpose 32-bit registers, and one special-purpose register.[4]

Audio and voice DSP IP

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Simplified block diagrams of HiFi audio engine and Xtensa LX
  • HiFi Mini Audio DSP — A small low power DSP core for voice triggering and voice recognition[5]
  • HiFi 2 Audio DSP — DSP core for low power MP3 audio processing[6]
  • HiFi EP Audio DSP — A superset of HiFi 2 with optimizations for DTS Master Audio, voice pre- and post-processing, and cache management[7]
  • HiFi 3 Audio DSP — 32-bit DSP for audio enhancement algorithms, wideband voice codecs, and multi-channel audio[8]
  • HiFi 3z Audio DSP — For lower-powered audio, wideband voice codecs, and neural-network-based speech recognition.[9]
  • HiFi 4 DSP - Higher performance DSP for applications such as multi-channel object-based audio standards.[10]
  • HiFi 5 DSP - For digital assistants, infotainment, and voice-controlled products.[11]

Vision DSPs

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Adoption

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History

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  • In 1997, Tensilica was founded by Chris Rowen.
  • Five years later, Tensilica released support for flexible length instruction encodings, known as FLIX.
  • By 2013, Cadence Design Systems acquired 100% of Tensilica.

Company name

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The brand name Tensilica is a combination of the word Tensile and Silica, with the latter referring to silicon, the building blocks of modern integrated circuits.[citation needed]

References

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  1. ^ "S-1 Supercomputer Alumni". Retrieved 2019-02-22. Most recently he was chief architect at Tensilica working on configurable/extensible processors.
  2. ^ Source: http://ip.cadence.com/news/432/330/Cadence-Reports-First-Quarter-2013-Financial-Results-and-Completes-Acquisition-of-Tensilica
  3. ^ https://0x04.net/~mwk/doc/xtensa.pdf §1.2.2
  4. ^ https://0x04.net/~mwk/doc/xtensa.pdf Chapter 3 "Core Architecture"
  5. ^ "Tensilica Introduces the Smallest, Lowest Power DSP IP Core For Always-Listening Voice Trigger and Voice Recognition". design-reuse.com. Retrieved 2024-03-05.
  6. ^ "Tensilica HiFi 2 Audio DSP Supports HE AAC by Dolby in Digital Radio Mondiale; Now Offers Decoders for All Major International Digital Radio Standards". design-reuse.com. Retrieved 2024-03-05.
  7. ^ "Tensilica Introduces HiFi EP DSP Core for High Quality Audio in Home Entertainment and Smartphone Applications". design-reuse.com. Retrieved 2024-03-05.
  8. ^ "Tensilica's HiFi 3 DSP IP Core Provides Over 1.5x Better Performance for Audio Post Processing and Voice in Smartphones and Home Entertainment". 2012-01-11. Retrieved 2024-03-05.
  9. ^ "Tensilica HiFi 3z DSP IP Core Provides Enhanced Voice and Audio Processing". circuitcellar.com. 2017-07-28. Retrieved 2024-03-05.
  10. ^ "Cadence Announces Fourth Generation Tensilica HiFi DSP Architecture". prnewswire.com. 2015-01-06. Retrieved 2024-03-05.
  11. ^ "HiFi 5 DSP". cadence.com. Cadence. Retrieved 4 October 2023.
  12. ^ "New Cadence Tensilica Vision P5 DSP Enables 4K Mobile Imaging with 13X Performance Boost and 5X Lower Energy".
  13. ^ "Cadence Announces New Tensilica Vision P6 DSP Targeting Embedded Neural Network Applications".
  14. ^ "Cadence Unveils Industry's First Neural Network DSP IP for Automotive, Surveillance, Drone and Mobile Markets".
  15. ^ "Everything You Wanted to Know About AMD TrueAudio". Maximum PC. 2013-10-08. Archived from the original on July 11, 2014. Retrieved 2014-07-06.
  16. ^ "TrueAudio Next". AMD GPUOpen. Retrieved 2024-11-11.
  17. ^ "Microsoft's HoloLens secret sauce: A 28nm customized 24-core DSP engine built by TSMC". The Register.
  18. ^ "ESP8266EX Datasheet" (PDF). October 2020. Retrieved 2021-03-23.
  19. ^ "ESP32 SeriesDatasheet" (PDF). 2021-03-19. Retrieved 2021-03-23.
  20. ^ "Spreadtrum Licenses Tensilica HiFi Audio/Voice DSP".
  21. ^ "Customer Spotlight: VIA Technologies Licenses Cadence Tensilica HiFi Audio/Voice DSP".
  22. ^ "Realtek Licenses Cadence's Tensilica HiFi Audio/Voice DSP IP Core".
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