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CSR bluetooth bites into MP3 market

Written by Sam Fountain

Wednesday, 26 March 2008

CSR's new chip will allow up to 100 hours of music playback along with Bluetooth The Bluetooth wizards at CSR have added yet more functionality available to mobile phone end users, combining Bluetooth with MP3 capabilities and providing handset developers with significant reductions in power usage, size and even cost. The Cambridge-based firm has launched its MusiCore1 chip, the first of its kind to feature a single-chip stereo audio processor plus Bluetooth for mobile phones, presenting handset makers with the first practical audio processor architecture for phone designs, saving the cost, space and power of adding a separate audio processor. “End-users are demanding MP3 as a function in phones but currently not using it because decoding MP3 files consumes too much power," said CSR's senior vice president of Mobile Handset Connectivity, Matthew Philips. "MusiCore1 addresses this by presenting low power but high quality stereo audio processing to give 100 hours of music playback, high quality voice enhancements and added Bluetooth wireless connectivity." Mobile phone CPUs are not appropriate for supporting decoding or playing back music - for example MP3 files - as this isn't what the main processing unit was designed for. As a result, the overburdened CPU consumes far more power than is practical for a portable, battery-powered unit. Other challenges met by mobile handset makers aiming to include music playback functionality are the considerable space of using a separate audio processing chip - around 36 square millimetres - and the cost, which at around $4 isn’t acceptable to handset makers who need to keep the bill of materials down and need to ensure the final handset design remains attractive for end users. CSR said that the new chip overcomes the limitations of a phone's CPU to handle both audio and voice processing, significantly reducing the higher bill of materials (BoM) and design restrictions of using both Bluetooth and audio processor chips. “This is a significant and groundbreaking proposition to handset makers and is being taken very seriously by our lead customers," said CSR's CEO, Joep van Beurden. “Our design team has produced a superb audio processor that is a perfect evolution of the DSP at the heart of our market leading BlueCore Multimedia products.” MusiCore1 supports decoding of all mainstream music file formats including MP3, AAC, AAC+, WMA and SBC. The efficiency of CSR’s mature DSP architecture means processing audio files is effortless: 5.25mW for an MP3 file, compared to the 80mW consumed by a phone’s CPU for the same decoding. This efficiency contributes to MusiCore1’s ability to provide a phone with 100 hours of music playback. The CPU can remain asleep when MusiCore1 is handling music files. Feature phone or high-end music phone designers can use MusiCore1 to embed both high quality stereo audio, CSR said, plus low latency Bluetooth, saving power, cost and PCB-space, whilst adding voice enhancement features. It said that at the same time, designers of ultra low cost phones now have the option to differentiate handsets by embedding Bluetooth and audio processing without sacrificing cost, features or quality. Set as favorite Bookmark Email This Hits: 278 Trackback(0) TrackBack URI for this entry Comments (0) Subscribe to this comment's feed Write comment This content has been locked. You can no longer post any comment.

 

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