Auto Audio Gets Upgrade with Cadence Tensilica
February 05, 2026
News
As UI/UX and Infotainment maintains its dominance over Automotive technology development news, the audio component of passenger and driver experience is too often overlooked. One company is trying to change that.
Cadence recently announced its new Tensilica HiFi iQ DSP IP, the sixth generation of its HiFi DSP family, based on a new architecture reportedly purpose-built for voice AI and emerging immersive audio.
The company said HiFi iQ DSP is designed to deliver the performance required for SoC computational demands and low-power drain. Cadence says HiFi iQ DSP is twice as powerful as the previous generation with 25 percent energy savings.
Audio clarity and listening accuracy are critical in automotive applications, where voice commands are required for safe operation. If road noise or slow processing are preventing infotainment or other systems from responding properly to commands, users will abandon the features. AI tools for noise cancelling and faster processing at the edge are rwquired to keep these systems working well. The latest immersive audio codecs, audio processing at higher sampling rates, object-based rendering, natural language processing (NLP), and automotive road noise cancellation (RNC) all require AI/ML capabilities and enhanced audio/voice pre- and post-processing functions, which demand more computations performed with low latency and low power for on-device processing in edge AI and physical AI applications.
Cadence said that’s why it’s developed a new architecture specifically designed for AI-enhanced, high-performance audio workloads. The Tensilica HiFi iQ DSP’s architectural enhancements and increased computational capability are engineered to enable sophisticated immersive audio codecs such as Dolby MS12, Eclipsa Audio, Opus HD, Audio Vivid and others to run with higher efficiency than on previous HiFi DSPs. Signal processing algorithms for keyword spotting (KWS), active noise cancellation (ANC), beamforming and automatic speech recognition (ASR) are available, in addition to multi-stream and multichannel audio playback that facilitate 3D spatial zone rendering and sound bubbles for realistic listening experiences.
The Tensilica HiFi iQ DSP will be available to lead customers and partners in the first quarter of 2026, with general availability expected in the following quarter, Cadence said. The HiFi iQ DSP is also targeted for ISO 26262 functional safety (FUSA) certification, making it suitable for safety critical applications. Future HiFi iQ DSP support for cache-coherent multicore configurations is planned.
Ken Briodagh is a writer and editor with two decades of experience under his belt. He is in love with technology and if he had his druthers, he would beta test everything from shoe phones to flying cars. In previous lives, he’s been a short order cook, telemarketer, medical supply technician, mover of the bodies at a funeral home, pirate, poet, partial alliterist, parent, partner and pretender to various thrones. Most of his exploits are either exaggerated or blatantly false.
