Overview

Frontier Design specializes in mapping complex application-specific signal processing algorithms onto dedicated custom hardware architectures. Frontier bridges the gap between algorithm design with development in high-level languages (such as C, Matlab or Pseudo-code) and implementation in custom digital processing architectures. Extremely efficient implementations are gained through combined optimization on algorithmic, architectural and gate level.

Frontier offers custom design and implementation of application-specific signal processing algorithms. creating fast, optimized solutions for your application. Turnaround times from algorithm to silicon in weeks and months rather than years are feasible when teaming with Frontier. Frontier also has in-depth knowledge of ITU and CCITT standards.

Frontier Design has expertise in speech-related technologies including speech recognition and synthesis. Multiple speech-compression algorithms have been implemented offering toll quality speech compression, and bit rates from 32 kbit/sec down to 2.4 kbit/sec.

In telecommunications, Frontier has implemented several popular blocks which allow rapid development of complex telecommunication systems. Frontier is extending its expertise through in-house R&D and the formation of strategic alliances with scientific and industrial partners in the consumer, multimedia, telecommunications and radar markets.

Frontierâs main products include:

• DSPWare^TM, Frontierâs signal processing algorithms implementation, is available in Synthesizable VHDL, various netlist formats and hard-coded plug and play FPGA and ASIC macro blocks.

  Key advantages of DSPWare components are:

  • Direct implementation of complex advanced signal-processing blocks
  • Compliance with standards and norms
  • Significant reduction of time-to-market and design cost
  • Very efficient implementation
  • Possibility to create very compact multiple channel implementations
  • Customer support on both hardware and algorithm level
• DSP Station^TM, a complete suite of DSP design, analysis and implementation tools, offering unequaled integration of software tools for algorithm capture and analysis, filter synthesis and optimization and implementation in algorithm specific processors.
• A|RT Library^TM and A|RT Builder^TM incorporating "Algorithm to Register Transfer" methodology. This methodology can effectively eliminate the traditional gap between systems engineering and hardware implementers. Included is a library which extends the C and C++ languages to accurately model fixed-point arithmetic allowing direct generation of VHDL or Verilog HDL code for simulation and implementation in silicon.

Areas of Expertise

The following table of products demonstrates areas of Frontier Designâs technical expertise. Xilinx and Frontier are in the process of evaluating these to determine which are suitable as AllianceCORE products. If you have a need for a specific product then contact Frontier Design for information or availability.

Product	Functional Description	Gates	ROM (kbytes)	RAM (kbytes)
DSP Functions
FFT	Fast Fourier Transform
Speech Recognition	Template-based, speaker-dependent, isolated-word, automatic speech recognition.	9,000	1	--
Pink-noise generator	Low-ripple pink noise filter with filter characteristic of -3 +/-0.08 dB per octave over the bandwidth 20Hz to 20kHz.	4,000	0.1	0.1
Image processing	Several core image processing blocks	--	--	--
CCIR 656/601	Digital video converter : CCIR to raw-video data and vice versa.	1,500	--	--
Triple Des	Triple data-encryption according to standard DES algorithm.
Speaker-independent speech recognition	Hidden-Markov-model based isolated-word speaker-independent speech recognition
MPEG Audio	Ultra compact and low power MPEG audio encoder/decoder
Speech synthesis	Phrase-concatenated speech synthesis.
Communications and Networking
ADPCM	Full-duplex ITU-T G.726 compliant 16, 24, 32 and 40 kbit/s speech-compression encoder/decoder. Operates at 4MHz.	6,500	0.280	0.128
ADPCM-8	Full duplex 8 channel ITU-T G.726 compliant 16, 24, 32 and 40 kbit/s speech-compression encoder/decoder. Operates at 16Mhz.	13,000	0.280	0.512
G.723.1	Low bit-rate ITU compliant speech-compression at 6.3 kbit/s, can be combined with G.723.1A. Operates at 20MHz.	18,000	22	2.3
G.723.1A	Silence compression scheme by voice activity detection and comfort-noise generation, compliant with Annex A of speech-compression standard CODEC G.723.1. Option for G.723.1 at no additional hardware cost.	--	--	--
G.729	Low bit-rate ITU-T compliant speech-compression codec at 8 kbit/s.
Echo canceler	High-performance Echo-cancellation and suppression processor. Operates at 4MHz.	6,000	0.28	0.150
DTMF	Full-duplex DTMF transceiver. Operates at 2 MHz.	4,000	0.28	0.150
Caller-ID	On-hook and off-hook caller line identification. Operates at 4MHz.	6,000	0.28	0.150
Reed Solomon	Full-duplex Reed-Solomon codec.	4,000	0.5	0.2
LU7	A 64 kbit/s data bearer service for DECT/ISDN gateways, performing automatic-repeat requests and RS forward-error control.	5,000	0.6	0.7
V23 modem	ITU-T V23 compliant 1200 baud FSK asynchronous modem.	6,000	0.28	0.15
MELP	Federal standard compliant speech-compression codec at 2.4 kbit/s.
Note: All gate counts are for example implementations and are application dependent

Contact Frontier Design Inc., USA

39675 Cedar Blvd. Suite 1000
Newark, California 94560
Phone: +1 510 445-8500
Fax: +1 510 445-8501
Email: info@frontierd.com
WWW:www.frontierd.com

Frontier Design NV, European Operations

Marconistraat 34
4004 JM TIEL
The Netherlands
Phone: +31 344 63 28 38
Fax: +31 344 63 26 31
URL: info@frontierd.com
E-mail: www.frontierd.com

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