CEVA, Inc. and ASPEED Technology, have announced that ASPEED has licensed and deployed the CEVA-BX1 audio/voice DSP in its 2nd generation Cupola360 SoC, AST1230 for smart cameras and video conferencing systems. The companies are also collaborating to address the most challenging conferencing use cases with the availability of CEVA's ClearVox multi-microphone noise reduction & acoustic echo cancellation audio front end (AFE) software. This software package is fully optimized for the CEVA-BX1 DSP, significantly enhancing the intelligibility of any voice conferencing system and allowing voice assistants and hands-free control capabilities to be added. ASPEED's 2nd generation Cupola360 multi-image stitching video & audio SoC, AST1230, as well as the accompanying app, is specifically designed for high performance video conferencing applications.

With a focus on advanced smart cameras for spherical video conferencing applications, the AST1230 SoC features include a powerful image signal processor (ISP) and a smart layout processing engine. Incorporating ASPEED's unique Hyper-stitching® technology, the AST1230 SoC is engineered to deliver extraordinary processing power for on-device real-time image stitching. Incorporating the high level programmable CEVA-BX1 DSP to tackle the most challenging audio/voice use cases, the AST1230 SoC offers exceptional power and thermal efficiency, making it ideal for a wide range of emerging IoT applications.

Additional features include 8 digital MIC inputs with powerful audio processing algorithms, including far-field speech, beam-forming, auto gain control (AGC), noise suppression, and echo cancelation. The CEVA-BX1 processor combines efficient DSP compute capability with high-level programming and compact code size requirements of embedded applications. Using an 11-stage pipeline and 4-way VLIW micro-architecture, it offers parallel processing with a Single Instruction Multiple Data (SIMD) ISA, widely used in neural networks inference, noise reduction and echo cancellation, as well as high accuracy sensor fusion algorithms. The CEVA-BX1 is accompanied by a comprehensive software development tool chain, including an advanced LLVM compiler, Eclipse based debugger, DSP and neural network compute libraries, neural network frameworks support in the form of Tensorflow Lite Micro, and choice of industry leading Real Time Operating Systems (RTOS).

Developed in-house and leveraging CEVA's vast expertize in audio and voice processing, ClearVox audio front end incorporates advanced algorithms that cope with different acoustic scenarios and microphone configurations, including optimized software for speaker direction of arrival, multi-mic beamforming, noise suppression and acoustic echo cancellation, as well as the related firmware and driver software.