Nearly all new ASIC and SOC designs incorporating digital audio employ some form of programmable DSP to run the audio codecs.  General-purpose control processors can implement audio codecs with a sufficiently fast clock. However, they are not the most efficient engines for running audio codecs, and almost always use more energy to deliver real-time, multi-channel audio.

DSPs generally run audio codecs more efficiently than do general-purpose processors because they have features that accelerate the execution of audio –specific code. However, DSPs have specialized and irregular architectures that make them poor control processors, so you still need a control processor to run along side the DSP.

Now there’s a third alternative – application-tailored RSIC processors – which start off as general-purpose processors capable of running any software program. Processor tailoring can add audio-specific extensions to the basic RISC processor architecture that accelerate the target audio applications while allowing the processor to remain a good C compiler target.

This white paper examines a lot of the things you should consider before designing audio into your next SOC or ASIC.  These include features such as low power, pre-ported codecs and audio-enhancement programs, performance at low MHz, low gate count for smaller area, and performance to spare so other tasks can also be assigned to the processor when audio isn’t required.