Wolfson licenses TinyCore DSP from Oxford

LONDON – Mixed-signal fabless chip company Wolfson Microelectronics plc has announced a licensing agreement with audio processing specialist Oxford Digital Ltd. whereby it can use the TinyCore digital signal processor core in a selection of audio hub products.

Oxford Digital's TinyCore DSP core is a configurable processor specifically designed to for digital audio processing. It supports up to 32 I/O channels with data widths of between 16 and 48 bits.

Oxford Digital was formed in July 2006 as a spin-off from Pro-Audio Lab of Sony Corp. based in Eynsham near Oxford, England. Sony’s CXD3772 was the first ASIC to use the TinyCore DSP.

Wolfson's Audio Hubs enable system designers to manage multiple use cases in portable multimedia applications including smartphones, tablet computers, e-book readers, navigation devices and media players.

"We selected Oxford Digital's TinyCore DSP due to its efficiency at executing certain key high-definition audio algorithms, which our customers tell us provide them with a differentiator in their market place," said Eddie Sinnott, portfolio director at Wolfson, in a statement. "Our choice was helped by the ease of its software porting process, excellent power efficiency, scalability and rapid time-to-market, all of which complement our architecture."

John Richards, CEO of Oxford Digital, said: "Our TinyCore audio DSP will enable Wolfson to respond very rapidly to customer requirements and minimize future embedded software maintenance costs due to the structure of our tools."