Knowles’ AISonic family of audio edge processors offers robust voice activation and multi-microphone audio processing optimized for power-sensitive applications. This processor has the compute power to perform advanced audio output, context awareness and gesture control for today’s most advanced consumer electronics.
Processing audio and voice on the IA8201 keeps the power-hungry host processor off as long as possible to extend battery life. The IA8201 delivers better far field voice understanding and processes commands more efficiently in noisy, real-world environments.
Ii also enables new audio use cases beyond what the host processor provides, and through concurrent sensing of voice, audio and other sensor inputs, delivers a more natural user experience. It packs 1.44MB of memory, numerous interface options, and dual 175MHz cores with voltage scaling in a tiny 2.6x3mm eWLB package and a 6.0×6.0mm QFN package.
Low power is achieved with a combination of cores offering the best combination of optimized instructions and industry compatibility.
The IA8201 includes a high compute 128-bit core (DMX) with Knowles proprietary instruction set and a Tensilica HiFi3 core (HMD), both with Knowles audio enhancements. The DMX is a 4-way floating-point SIMD processor targeted towards efficient performance computing (e.g. beam-forming, barge-in, AEC), while the HMD is targeted towards efficient, low-power, wake-on-voice applications with a two-way floating-point SIMD processor. Both cores contain dedicated accelerators for FFT, peak finding and DNNs.
The IA8201 solution provides generous memory (1.4MB) that is sized for specific use cases and architected for single-cycle access and low power. This large memory size can be used to store various keyword models, engines or other algorithms.
Rich interface options include 2x I2C, 2x SPI, 2 x UART, and 24 GPIOs with interrupts to support various sensor and data connections, plus 4x PDM in, 2xPDM out, 3x I2S/TDM (4ch in/out) to support up to 4 microphones and various audio connections.
Hordon Kim
International Editor, hordon@powerelectronics.co.kr
