DSP Concepts Enhances Audio Weaver to Support Cadence Tensilica HiFi DSPs

Innovative graphical development tool speeds up audio DSP programming by up to 10X

SAN JOSE, Calif., January 5, 2016—Cadence Design Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ: CDNS) and DSP Concepts today announced that DSP Concepts’ graphical audio development tool, Audio Weaver®, has been optimized for Cadence® Tensilica® HiFi Audio/Voice digital signal processors (DSPs). This technology from DSP Concepts is an innovative design environment for developing optimized embedded audio software. Development teams can create applications that realize their desired sound quality up to 10X faster than traditional development approaches by allowing developers to work in parallel at different stages of the development cycle and by reusing pre-built, highly optimized audio processing modules.

The Audio Weaver technology enables Tensilica HiFi programmers to develop optimized audio applications using a graphical development environment without writing code or invoking a compiler. The technology empowers audio engineers to be more creative and efficient by streamlining all stages of audio application development from concept to real-time tuning. Audio Weaver provides a more direct feedback loop between signal processing architectural changes and resulting sound characteristics, streamlining the link from architecture concept to result.

The Tensilica HiFi DSP is the most widely used licensable audio/voice/speech DSP family, with support for over 160 proven audio/voice software packages and over 75 software partners in the Tensilica Xtensions^TM partner program. For more information on the Tensilica HiFi DSP family, visit http://www.cadence.com/news/HiFiDSP/DSPConcepts.

“Audio Weaver has been successfully used in consumer, automotive and IoT applications and now, with our Cadence partnership, Tensilica HiFi developers can benefit from Audio Weaver's agile graphical design environment. The ability to easily evaluate and integrate third-party IP is crucial when facing ever-shorter design cycles,” said Paul Beckmann, CEO of DSP Concepts. “The Tensilica HiFi DSP is well suited for next-generation always-on and contextually aware microphone-processing applications. Audio Weaver accelerates the pace of innovation in this area and enables product developers to provide unique and feature-rich products.”

“With the explosive growth of the home audio market and increasing interest in high-resolution audio, audio hardware technology and the tools to support rapid development and deployment of products is becoming increasingly important,” said Peter Cooney, principal analyst and director of SAR Insight and Consulting. ”Cadence and DSP Concepts' Audio Weaver certainly seem to have put all the pieces together to provide audio engineers with the means to deliver more sophisticated audio processing."

“Customers today continue to face grueling schedules and reduced development budgets,” said Larry Przywara, group director of marketing, audio/voice IP, Cadence. “DSP Concepts’ AudioWeaver graphical design tool helps address those challenges by greatly reducing the time that it takes to develop, test and tune a complete audio system.”

About DSP Concepts

DSP Concepts is headquartered in Santa Clara, CA and was founded by Paul Beckmann, Ph.D., in 2003 to provide consulting services for audio DSP. After years of consulting and helping numerous clients build products, Paul saw a common set of problems faced by all audio product developers. As a result, DSP Concepts invested in developing a proprietary design tool to facilitate rapid development and deployment of technology enabling product developers to get their products to market faster. DSP Concepts has a proven track record of cutting development time by as much as 90 percent.

About Cadence

Cadence enables global electronic design innovation and plays an essential role in the creation of today’s integrated circuits and electronics. Customers use Cadence software, hardware, IP and services to design and verify advanced semiconductors, consumer electronics, networking and telecommunications equipment, and computer systems. The company is headquartered in San Jose, Calif., with sales offices, design centers and research facilities around the world to serve the global electronics industry. More information about the company, its products and its services is available at http://www.cadence.com.