Texas Instruments Unveils New Automotive Audio Processors at CES 2025

Texas Instruments (TI) introduced new integrated automotive chips to enable safer, more immersive driving experiences at any vehicle price point. A highly integrated automotive Arm-based microcontroller (MCU) and processor with TI’s vector-based C7x digital signal processor (DSP) core to achieve industry-leading processor performance. And TI’s new audio amplifier is the industry’s first with one-inductor (1L) modulation technology, allowing it to achieve Class-D performance with half the number of inductors.
 
Texas Instruments is showcasing these new devices at CES 2025, motivating car manufacturers to deliver premium audio experiences with less budget constraints. According to Texas Instruments, with the next-generation audio DSP core, the AM275x-Q1 MCUs and AM62D-Q1 processors, premium audio features become more affordable. Paired with TI’s latest analog products, including the TAS6754-Q1 Class-D audio amplifier, designers can take advantage of a complete audio amplifier system offering. 

“Today’s drivers expect any car – entry-level to luxury, combustion to electric – to have enhanced in-cabin experiences,” says Amichai Ron, senior vice president, TI Embedded Processing. “TI continues to provide innovative technologies to enable the future of the automotive driving experience. Our edge AI-enabled radar sensors allow automakers to make vehicles safer and more responsive to the driver, while our audio systems-on-chip elevate the drive through more immersive audio. Together they create a whole new level of in-cabin experiences.”

As driver expectations grow for elevated in-cabin experiences across vehicle models, OEMs aim to offer premium audio while minimizing design complexity and system cost. The new AM275x-Q1 MCUs and AM62D-Q1 processors reduce the number of components required for an automotive audio amplifier system by integrating TI's vector-based C7x DSP core, Arm cores, memory, audio networking and a hardware security module into a single, functional safety-capable SoC. The C7x core, coupled with a matrix multiply accelerator, together form a neural processing unit that processes both traditional and edge AI-based audio algorithms. These automotive audio SoCs are scalable, allowing designers to meet memory and performance needs, from entry-level to high-end systems, with minimal redesign and investment.
 
TI’s next-generation C7x DSP core achieves more than four times the processing performance of other audio DSPs, allowing audio engineers to manage multiple features within a single core. AM275x-Q1 MCUs and AM62D-Q1 processors enable immersive audio inside the cabin with features such as spatial audio, active noise cancellation, sound synthesis and advanced vehicle networking, including over Ethernet.

“Dolby’s longtime collaboration with Texas Instruments has enabled incredible audio experiences in the home, which we’re now bringing into the car,” says Andreas Ehret, senior director of Automotive Business at Dolby Laboratories. “With TI's C7x DSP core, we can now deliver the latest Dolby Atmos capabilities more efficiently, including support for even smaller form factor audio systems so nearly all vehicles can have Dolby Atmos. Together, these products can help turn every car ride into an immersive entertainment experience.”

To further optimize their automotive audio designs, car makers can use TI’s new TAS6754-Q1 audio amplifier with innovative 1L modulation technology to deliver class-leading audio performance and power consumption, with half the number of inductors compared to existing Class-D amplifiers. The TAS67xx-Q1 family of devices, which integrates real-time load diagnostics required by OEMs, helps engineers simplify designs, decrease costs, and increase efficiency without sacrificing audio quality.

Design engineers familiar with Class-D automotive amplifiers know that they require two inductor-capacitor (LC) filters per channel of audio to filter high-frequency switching noise. To shrink the size of the LC filters, TI developed audio amplifiers to support up to 2.1MHz switching, enabling the use of significantly smaller and cheaper inductors. The image below compares this size evolution of the inductors from 400kHz to 2.1MHz.
  Now, TI is taking the next step to further reduce LC filter size with an audio amplifier integrating its proprietary one-inductor (1L) modulation technology. This technology maintains Class-D performance, while cutting the number of inductors per channel by half, which leads to 50% less inductor cost and a solution up to 50% smaller and lighter. The end benefits include simplified audio designs and increased efficiency. The image below demonstrates how amplifiers with 1L modulation reduce the number of inductors of a 20-channel audio system to 10 channels, resulting in a 34% size reduction.
  The TAS6754-Q1 audio amplifier also incorporates features such as real-time load diagnostics, current sense per channel, and up to 19V operation for safe operation and higher performance. Real-time load diagnostics tracks the status of the load for open loads, shorted loads, shorts to power and shorts to ground, whether audio is playing or not. This feature ensures that the amplifier is functioning properly and provides a safe and reliable listening experience.

Another notable feature is the low-latency path option. If the system requires active noise cancellation or road noise cancellation, the TAS6754-Q1 enables fully-featured low-latency audio for quick response of the injected audio signal.

Preproduction quantities of the AWRL6844, AM2754-Q1, AM62D-Q1 and TAS6754-Q1 devices are available for purchase now on TI.com. Evaluation modules are available for all four devices.
www.TI.com