Toshiba Introduces DSP Codec for Mobile Digital Audio Player

18 September, 2000


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expanding the use of mobile digital audio players

Tokyo--Toshiba Corporation today announced development of a new series of single-chip digital signal processors (DSP) for digital audio players that incorporate both signal encoders and decoders system. The new DSP is programmed to support encoding and decoding of Advanced Audio Coding (AAC), a widely used compression format for high quality digital sound, and MP3 decoding.

The vast majority of digital audio players support decoding of compressed music data sources but not encoding. As a result, anybody who wants to transfer music from a CD to a digital music player must first upload it to a PC and then download it to the player. Players incorporating both decoding and encoding capabilities will greatly simplify the process and are expected to attract a large number of customers.

The DSP in Toshiba's new TC9486F/XB series support both decoding and encoding, allowing music on CDs to be directly transferred to a digital audio player. The chip is designed to support the high quality sound of AAC, the advanced sound compression format for music distribution; it will also be used for sound sources in the digital satellite broadcasting due to start in Japan this December. AAC is also supported by the SD Association, the promoter of the SD memory card. In addition to support for AAC, TC 9486F/XB series DSP also have the programmable capacity required to support decoding of other compression formats, such as AC-3 and dts. Toshiba can program the chips in accordance with customer's wishes at the production stage.

The DSP in the TC9486F/XB series are fully dedicated for audio use, and their firmware was co-developed with the Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits IIS-A in Erlangen, Germany, the leading research lab in audio and multimedia source coding technology (http://www.iis.fhg.de). Digital filters, sound-field control for hall simulations, an equalizer and dynamic range controls can all be integrated into the chip design.

The DSP all incorporate an audio interface supporting simple construction of encoding systems, including direct connection with the servo LSI of CD players. There is also support for an independent digital SPDIF input/output terminal to assure cheaper construction of a codec system with other AV products. A further refinement is that a codec system with optical digital input/output can be easily configured with adoption of the TosLink optical fiber system.

The 0.25 micron design rule has been used to reduce the chip size and lower power consumption. And by expanding the capacity of program ROM, data RAM and coefficient ROM used in the chip, a codec system with no external RAM or ROM can be realized.

Samples of the new DSP will be available at the end of the year at ¥2,000 and mass production will begin from the first quarter of 2001 at an initial monthly volume of 100,000.

Specifications

Part number TC9486F/XB series
Package QFP100/FBGA144
Instruction cycle 10ns (100 MIPS operation)
Operating clock PLL incorporated for DSP clock
Processor 24bit x 24 bit + 51bit multiplier and adder, 51 bit ALU
Data bus 24bit x 3
Data RAM 20k word
Coefficient ROM 32k word
Program ROM 24k word
Program RAM 512 word
Audio interface 4 output ports, 2 input ports (2 ports of LRCK and BCK)
Independent SPDIF (IEC958) input/output
MCU interface Serial interface or I2C bus interface
Operating voltage 2.5V for DSP core and 3.3V for interface


  • "AC-3" is registered trademark of Dolby Laboratories Licensing Corporation.
  • "dts" is registered trademark of Digital Theater Systems, Inc.


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