Products & Solutions
ARC® Sound Advanced Subsystem
The Highest Fidelity, Multi-Standard Programmable Subsystem for Advanced Audio Applications
The ARC® Sound Advanced Subsystem is a complete audio subsystem solution. It integrates a 32-bit ARC 700 family configurable RISC/DSP core, ARC's award-winning 128-bit SIMD audio accelerator, a dual channel, media-optimized DMA controller, and a library of basic and advanced audio codecs. The ARC Sound Advanced Subsystem is programmable and multi-standard, and provides the highest fidelity processing of widely-used audio codecs.
 Ready for Enhanced Audio Clarity, Detail and Realism
In addition to broad support of audio formats, the ARC Sound Advanced Subsystem is Sonic Focus-ready. OEMs who choose SoCs based on the ARC Sound Advanced Subsystem have the additional benefit of award-winning audio post processing technology from Sonic Focus, an ARC International company. This revolutionary software, optimized for ARC Sound, recreates the clarity, detail and realism of an original performance from compressed audio sources such as stereo MP3.
For more information about Sonic Focus’s award-winning audio post-processing technology, visit www.sonicfocus.com .
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| Block Diagram | Benefits of the ARC Sound Advanced Subsystem |
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Ideal for Demanding Processing Requirements |
ARC Sound Advanced Subsystem Block Diagram
Additional elements within the ARC Sound Advanced Subsystem:
- Library of basic and advanced audio codecs, including MP3, WMA, AAC, and Dolby Digital (AC-3)
- Car Infotainment codec bundle for high-speed CD ripping, consisting of multi-channel Sample Rate Converter bundle, high-speed encode, and multi-stream decode
- Multi-channel sample rate converter module for decoding simultaneous multi-standard audio streams
- Special high-speed AAC-LC encode module and highly efficient multi-format, multi-rate Sample Rate Converter
- Memory Management Unit (MMU) to support open OSs such as Linux
- Hardware and software development tools
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Benefits of the ARC Sound Advanced Subsystem
Programmable
The ARC Sound Advanced Subsystem is programmable so SoC designers can include host control functionality, pre- and post-processing, as well as additional audio codecs to extend market life. All of ARC's Multimedia Subsystems are supported by the industry's leading software development environments, such as ARC's MetaWare® IDE, GNU tool chains (including GCC and GDB), as well as operating systems such as the MQX RTOS, and other optimized solutions from third parties.
Additionally, the ARC Sound Subsystem implements the ARCompact™ 16-/32-bit ISA, which provides up to a 40 percent improvement in code density by allowing 16- and 32-bit instructions to be freely mixed without any additional overhead.
High Fidelity
Never again will designers have to compromise on audio quality due to architectural limitations. ARC Sound Advanced utilizes a 64-bit accumulator for the extremely high-precision intermediate and output computations required by the most advanced Dolby and DTS audio codecs. It is the only subsystem supporting 16-, 20-, 24-, or 32-bit audio samples while incorporating a 64-bit accumulator to ensure the very highest fidelity results.
Multi-Standard
The ARC Sound Advanced subsystem accelerates multiple audio codec standards. It supports decoding and encoding for most of the major audio standards such as MP3, WMA, AAC, and Dolby Digital (AC-3), TrueHD, DTS HD, and aacPlus. The processing of multi-format, multi-channel audio comes standard, including support for very high bit-rate compressed audio streams.
32-bit RISC/DSP Subsystem
The ARC Sound Advanced Subsystem includes an ARC 700 family processor, which is a 7-stage, 32-bit configurable RISC/DSP core that can serve as a control, applications, and host processor. In addition, the ARC 700 family processor handles all the outer loop audio codec control processing, feeds instructions to the SIMD accelerator, and optionally runs the RTOS, Media Player, and USB/ENET IO stacks.
Award Winning 128-bit SIMD Accelerator
The ARC Sound Advanced Subsystems 128-bit SIMD accelerator includes more than 60 audio-specific instructions that accelerate commonly used audio algorithms, such as discrete cosine transforms (DCT) and digital sub-band filtering. It also enhances multi-channel audio algorithms, and enables very tight code compression in codecs such as Dolby Digital TrueHD, DTS HD, and aacPlus. The ARC SIMD accelerator can operate on up to eight 16-bit or four 32-bit audio samples in parallel, and is responsible for the audio codec inner loop processing, where it performs computations on DMA-fetched audio. The media-optimized, dual-channel DMA controller supports the ARC SIMD accelerator by handling audio data transfers to and from main memory. ARC Sound Advanced supports standard bus protocols, including BVCI and AHB.
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Ideal for Demanding Processing Requirements
- Low power and small die size devices
- Configurable and programmable subsystem architectures
- Optimized, integrated multi-standard audio codecs
- Easy integration of audio pre- or post-processing algorithms
- Multi-channel (5.1, 7.1, 13.1, etc) audio decoders and encoders
- Parallel operations on either eight 16-bit or four 20-/24-/32-bit audio samples simultaneously
- Stereo down-mixing of any multi-channel digital audio stream
- Transcoding of advanced audio codecs to support output to legacy decoding devices
- Processing of multiple audio streams with variable bit-stream formats and sample rates
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- Simultaneous high-speed audio encoding and multi-stream decoding
- High-fidelity Sample Rate Conversion (SRC) to match decoded audio stream format to fixed resolution characteristics of on-board DAC
- Operation as a standalone audio subsystem or in conjunction with an existing host processor
- Running either an open OS (e.g. Linux) or an RTOS (e.g. MQX)
- Processor handling of the HDD/Flash file system, LCD touch-panel, DACs, and ENET/USB stacks
- A shared system memory architecture
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