Digital Audio Effect System-on-a-Chip Based on Embedded DSP Core

This paper describes the implementation of a digital audio effect system-on-a-chip (SoC), which integrates an embedded digital signal processor (DSP) core, audio codec intellectual property, a number of peripheral blocks, and various audio effect algorithms. The audio effect SoC is developed using a software and hardware co-design method. In the design of the SoC, the embedded DSP and some dedicated hardware blocks are developed as a hardware design, while the audio effect algorithms are realized using a software centric method. Most of the audio effect algorithms are implemented using a C code with primitive functions that run on the embedded DSP, while the equalization effect, which requires a large amount of computation, is implemented using a dedicated hardware block with high flexibility. For the optimized implementation of audio effects, we exploit the primitive functions of the embedded DSP compiler, which is a very efficient way to reduce the code size and computation. The audio effect SoC was fabricated using a 0.18 µm CMOS process and evaluated successfully on a real-time test board.