NXP Development Tools Support New Ultra-Wideband Applications With iPhone and Apple Watch

NXP Semiconductors has announced that it now offers beta Ultra-Wideband (UWB) development tools from its NXP Trimension portfolio that interoperate with the U1 chip in supported Apple products. The beta development tools will allow developers to kick-start the design of innovative applications that interact with UWB enabled Apple products including iPhone and Apple Watch, unleashing the ability to create more precise, directionally aware app experiences.

CEVA announced support for latest Dolby MS12 Multistream Decoder on the CEVA-BX2 audio DSP. The integration provides System-on-Chip (SoC) designers and device manufacturers with a low power, rapid time-to-market solution that will enable complete support for Dolby's latest family of formats and audio codecs, including Dolby Atmos, Dolby AC-4, and Dolby Audio. This makes the CEVA-BX2 an ideal solution for new Smart TVs, soundbars and more designs, benefiting of all the included audio DSP features, such as far-field noise reduction and AI speech recognition.

Amazon has qualified the VocalFusion 2-mic dev kit for Alexa Voice Services launched by XMOS for smart TVs and set-top boxes in July 2019. The qualification highlights the opportunity for manufacturers to build Amazon Alexa voice capabilities into their products more easily and cost effectively than ever before. Amazon highlights the product’s engineering innovation, enabling lower cost voice capabilities with all the performance of a 4-mic solution, and paving the way for mass market implementation of far-field applications.

The massive growth in the voice assistant market has created a vibrant ecosystem and significant opportunities for hardware and software developers. Total voice software unit shipments are expected to increase significantly to 2024, according to SAR Insight & Consulting. The firm latest report forecasts a larger increase in voice software, especially within home devices such as smart speakers, soundbars, smart TVs and smart appliances.

G-Audio, a next generation audio technology company dedicated to enhancing the listening experience for Extended-Reality (XR) and streaming media, launched its Sol Loudness SDK for streaming services, adding to its existing Sol SDK spatial audio rendering for 360° video. This new software solution smooths variations in loudness and provides continuity of perceived sound levels for OTT video and music streaming platforms, allowing platforms to provide a better audio experience for its subscribers.

Blackfire Research Corp., a wireless network specialist from San Francisco, CA, announced the availability of Blackfire RED, or Real-time Entertainment Distribution framework. The company says that Blackfire RED is the industry's only wireless and entertainment-centric infrastructure software framework built from the ground up to both overcome the limitations of Wi-Fi when used for media, and wireless entertainment-related consumer applications and products.