BusinessWire
February 21, 2006 05:01 AM US Pacific Timezone

Sonic Network's Next Generation Audio Synthesis Now Available in Tensilica's HiFi Audio Engines; Personal Media Devices Benefit From Market Leading Interactive Audio Generation Capability for Ringtones and Mobile Gaming

BOSTON & SANTA CLARA, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Feb. 21, 2006--Sonic Network Inc., a worldwide provider of audio synthesis technology to the handheld consumer device and musical instrument markets, and Tensilica(R), Inc., the leader in automated configurable processor technology, today announced that Sonic's Embedded Audio Synthesis (EAS(TM)) technology has been ported to Tensilica's new Diamond 330HiFi audio processor and the Xtensa(R) HiFi 2 audio engine. Sonic's EAS technology has been designed specifically for mobile devices that need both a low memory/processor footprint solution as well as very high quality polyphonic audio.

Jennifer Hruska, president and founder of Sonic Network, states, "Tensilica's 24-bit embedded audio processors have significant advantages over the 16-bit audio processors commonly available in the SoC markets, most specifically providing a superior sound quality of the synthesized audio. In addition, with Tensilica's efficient compiler, we were able to achieve performance levels in C-code that are comparable to hand-optimized assembly code on other processors. The specialized instruction set within both HiFi engines allowed us to achieve a low processor footprint very quickly, an important porting goal since our customers are continually striving for higher polyphony on their products."

Steve Roddy, vice president of marketing, Tensilica, states, "The availability of Sonic's EAS on both the Diamond 330HiFi processor core and the Xtensa HiFi 2 Audio Engine provides a pre-integrated and validated, high quality, low risk audio solution that enables SOC designers to quickly design audio-enabled devices such as cellular phones, portable music players, and mobile game devices. We are pleased to add Sonic's EAS to the growing suite of application software available on our HiFi engines."

Sonic's EAS technology on Tensilica's processors supports the following open standards:

-- General MIDI Level 1 (GM1)

-- MIDI Type 0 and MIDI Type 1

-- General MIDI Lite (GML)

-- Mobile DLS (mDLS)

-- Scalable Polyphony MIDI (SP-MIDI)

-- Synthetic Mobile Application Format (SMAF) including ADPCM

-- Downloadable Sounds (DLS) and Mobile Downloadable Sounds (mDLS)

-- Mobile eXtensible Media Format (mXMF)

About Sonic Network

Sonic Network, Inc. provides embedded audio technology and content (music and sounds) that enable high quality, engaging audio and multi-media playback. The company licenses its products in a wide variety of markets including Wireless Devices, Semiconductors, PC Soundcards, Games, and Music Synthesizers. Consumers enjoy crystal clear music and multi-media playback on all devices, despite a particular platform's memory, processing or functional constraints. For this reason, Sonic has gained a well-deserved reputation of providing superb next-generation quality audio.

About Tensilica

Tensilica was founded in July 1997 to address the growing need for optimized, application-specific microprocessor and DSP solutions in high-volume embedded applications. Using a patented configurable and extensible processor generation technology, Tensilica is the only company that offers a wide range of controller, CPU and specialty DSP processors in both off-the-shelf format via the Diamond Standard series cores, and with full designer-configurability with the Xtensa processor family. Every Tensilica processor core comes complete with a companion software development tool environment, portfolio of system simulation models, and hardware implementation tool support. For more information on Tensilica's patented approach to the creation of application-specific building blocks for SOC design, visit www.tensilica.com.