The latest addition to the HiFi DSP family is based on a purpose-built architecture designed and has double the compute power of the company’s HiFi 5s DSP and x8 higher AI performance. It is energy-efficient – Cadence claims there are more than 25% energy savings on most workloads, and it is also claimed to improve performance by 40% for audio codecs.
Enhanced auto-vectorisation allows for easy programming and to reduce time-to-market, said Cadence. There is also integrated support for FP8, BF16 and other formats to run cutting-edge voice AI models.
The architectural enhancements and increased computate performance enable immersive audio codecs such as Dolby MS12, Eclipsa Audio, Opus HD, Audio Vivid, 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) can be performed seamlessly, enabling NLP functions. Multi-stream and multi-channel audio playback facilitates rendering of 3D spatial zones and sound bubbles can improve listening experiences.
Voice-input has been called the next keyboard as it is used to initiate commands and operations. The Tensilica HiFi iQ DSP is capable of running popular small language models (SLMs) and large language models (LLMs) on the DSP, acting as an all-in-one AI processor for voice AI applications. It can be paired with Cadence’s Neo NPUs or customer-built NPUs to boost performance and energy efficiency, said the company.
The DSP is compatible with the Cadence NeuroWeave software development kit, TensorFlow Lite for Micro (TFLM), LiteRT and ExecuTorch environments for AI model execution as well as the software libraries, compilers, codec packages and frameworks of ecosystem partners’ and OEMs.
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.
It is also targeted for ISO 26262 functional safety (FUSA) certification, making it suitable for safetycritical applications. The company also plans HiFi iQ DSP support for cache-coherent multicore configurations.
Cadence and IP partners provide pre-validated packaged chiplets