Microcontrollers that combine Hi-Fi, intelligence and USB multi-channel features – ushering in a new era of digital audio

With the continuous integration of many technological breakthroughs and new streaming services, and the growing prosperity of the smart home and smart speaker markets, consumers' demand for audio is no longer limited to sound quality itself, but more about pursuing high-quality life experience and convenient smart interconnection. Therefore, in order to better welcome the new era of digital audio, today's digital audio must not only provide Hi-Fi sound quality, but also serve as a human-machine interface for smart devices, and can also be easily connected using USB multi-channel and other methods......

XMOS integrates edge AI, DSP, control unit and I/O functions in its latest xcore devices, so it can develop highly advanced systems using software in many applications and scenarios such as new generation audio, motor control, industrial automation and edge computing. This feature of maintaining flexibility and programmability while achieving high-performance hardware can bring faster time to market and lower costs for engineers and system companies.

This feature of xcore has been fully demonstrated in the field of smart audio. It has accumulated many solutions and excellent products, and has been widely recognized and adopted by the industry and the market. Recently, XMOS has received good news in the audio industry and market: First, its xcore®-voice complete smart audio solution won the "Product Leap Award" in August, and recently won the "IoT Technology Innovation Award" jointly sponsored by "Electronic Enthusiasts" and "Munich South China Electronics Show" with its excellent performance, power consumption and flexibility. Secondly, many audio solution providers that have cooperated with XMOS have recently released new products frequently, which have received very good responses in the market.

xcore-voice is a complete intelligent audio solution including hardware, software and tools, which can free audio processing from the system SoC; the solution provides a natural audio interface that can provide local command recognition and minimize the need for the cloud. It can provide easy-to-integrate, cost-effective audio interfaces and high-quality audio for various system products such as home appliances, smart homes, consumer electronics, medical electronics and fitness equipment, and no longer occupy the main control SoC and its resources.

In practical applications, the xcore-voice complete intelligent audio solution provides an example design of an audio processing pipeline, uses XMOS's verified audio front end, combines far-field processing and supports third-party audio algorithms; it can also provide multi-channel transmission I/O + sound effects + DSP + AI functions, bringing better performance, economy and time to market to system developers.

XMOS's audio solutions continue to win awards, which is only one aspect of the company's fruitful achievements in audio technology. More importantly, the company's technical partners have also achieved fruitful results and are widely welcomed by the terminal market. For example, XMOS and its partner Xiaolong International jointly launched a multi-channel audio board LIL-AUDIO-XU316-CS08P-KIT that integrates ASRC functions, supports full-speed and high-speed USB operations and eight simultaneous bidirectional audio streams.

Audio professionals enthusiastically visited the Feiteng Cloud and XMOS booths at the Acoustic Building event

Recently, XMOS' official audio solution provider Feiteng Cloud Technology joined hands with XMOS to participate in the "2024 International Audio Industry Summit and the 19th Anniversary Meeting of Acoustic Building", the most influential exchange event in the field of audio technology in China, and held and participated in a number of activities on site, including a comprehensive display of three sets of leading and industrializable technologies and corresponding products developed by Feiteng Cloud with the support of XMOS:

1. AI Deep Noise Reduction (DNR) technology and USB AI noise reduction microphone application

2. DSP sound effects, Hi-Fi audio interface and USB high-quality multi-channel audio

3. Spatial audio technology and its application in various scenarios such as gaming headsets

The on-site response was strong and received rave reviews.

XMOS demonstrated multiple solutions on site

Mou Tao, head of XMOS Asia Pacific marketing and sales, commented: "I am very pleased to continue to gain industry recognition. The xcore-voice complete intelligent audio solution is aimed at today's and future intelligent applications, providing a new generation of low power consumption, high-performance human-machine interface and edge intelligence support, while also providing the highest quality audio, so it has extremely diverse and extensive application scenarios. XMOS and its ecological partners have also been deeply engaged in modern audio technology. Together, we will innovate for the future and provide solid support and real value to OEMs and system solution providers in the global audio field."

Welcome to purchase the xcore-voice development kit. In just a few steps, you can build your own smart audio system and start application development.

XMOS has launched three generations of xcore technology to the market, each using a proprietary instruction set, and recently announced that it will introduce the RISC-V instruction set in its new architecture. This technological advancement, coupled with the introduction of an ecosystem familiar to engineers, makes it easier to bring the revolutionary advantages of the XMOS platform to a wider range of applications. Each generation of xcore technology has been widely welcomed and applied, covering multiple fields such as personal electronics and smart homes, industrial control, automotive and edge intelligence.