Optimized TrulyHandsfree™ technology from Sensory leverages performance, power benefits and tool chain efficiency of leading voice/audio DSP; Companies to showcase solution at Mobile World Congress 2013

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., Feb. 19, 2013 / PRNewswire/ -- CEVA, Inc. (NASDAQ: CEVA), the leading licensor of silicon intellectual property (SIP) platform solutions and DSP cores, and Sensory, Inc., the leader in speech technologies for consumer products, today announced that the companies have partnered to offer an advanced voice recognition solution based on the industry-leading CEVA-TeakLite-4 DSP and Sensory's TrulyHandsfree™ always-on voice activation technology. The solution includes Sensory's innovative Low Power Speech Detector technology, which dramatically reduces power consumption for always-listening devices, and marks the first time this technology has been implemented on a DSP core.

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Illustrating the inherent power benefits of deploying Sensory technology on the CEVA-TeakLite-4 DSP, Sensory's voice activation technology consumes less than 60uW on the DSP when implemented in a 28nm process, making it ideal for a wide range of power-sensitive applications, including smartphones, tablets, games, televisions, and automobiles. The companies will demonstrate Sensory's TrulyHandsfree Voice Control running on CEVA silicon at the upcoming Mobile World Congress in CEVA's booth (Stand 7i70).

"CEVA's audio and voice platforms are recognized for their leadership role in the handset industry, and by partnering with them to bring our TrulyHandsfree technology to the CEVA-TeakLite-4 DSP, we are able to deliver a highly efficient and easy-to-integrate solution for CEVA's broad customer base," said Bernard Brafman, vice president of business development at Sensory. "The user-friendly, advanced suite of software and hardware development tools allowed us to port and optimize our solution in record time, while the performance of the CEVA-TeakLite-4 platform also offers the ability to incorporate additional Sensory voice technologies, such as biometric speaker identification and text-to-speech."

Sensory's TrulyHandsfree™ Voice Control technology offers multiple phrase technology that recognizes, analyzes and responds to dozens of keywords. It consistently recognizes phrases even when embedded in sentences in a noisy environment. Traditional approaches to keyword spotting have failed in high noise and frequently false fire, but TrulyHandsfree™ shows unparalleled accuracy without false fires even in high noise and speech. The fully programmable CEVA-TeakLite-4 DSP provides processing power to implement such advanced algorithms, while leaving plenty of headroom to support other audio/voice related functions in software.   

"Sensory has significantly improved the state-of-the-art when it comes to voice recognition accuracy and performance with its always-on voice activation technology," said Moshe Sheier, director of product marketing, audio & voice at CEVA. "Combined with the second generation power scaling unit and audio/voice targeted instruction set architecture of our CEVA-TeakLite-4 DSP, product developers can easily incorporate Sensory's high-quality voice activation technologies into devices at the lowest power consumption in the industry, meeting the demanding design specifications for battery life."

About CEVA-TeakLite-4

The CEVA-TeakLite-4 is the fourth generation DSP based on the CEVA-TeakLite architecture, the most successful licensable DSP family in the history of the semiconductor industry, with more than 2 billion audio/voice chips shipped, over 100 licensees, 30 active ecosystem partners and more than 100 audio and voice software packages available. The CEVA-TeakLite-4 is offered as an architecture framework, composed of four DSP cores, the TL410/TL411/TL420/TL421, all having a 32-bit native data width required for advanced pre and post-processing voice/audio applications. It is fully compatible with previous generations of the CEVA-TeakLite family, ensuring that the complete software portfolio of the CEVA-TeakLite architecture runs on the CEVA-TeakLite-4 with improved efficiency. By taking advantage of a unified development infrastructure composed of code-compatible cores, a set of optimized software libraries and a unified tool chain, customers can significantly reduce software development costs while leveraging their software investment in future products. For more information, visit http://www.ceva-dsp.com/CEVA-TeakLite-4.html.

About Sensory, Inc.

Sensory, Inc. is the leader in speech technologies for consumer products, offering a complete line of IC and software-only solutions for speech recognition, speech synthesis, speaker verification, music synthesis and more. Sensory's products are widely deployed in consumer electronic applications including Smart Phones, Automotive, Bluetooth™ products, toys, and various home electronics. Sensory's customers represent the leaders in consumer electronics, including such companies as AT&T, BlueAnt Wireless, Hasbro, JVC, Kenwood, Mattel, Mitsubishi, Toshiba, Uniden, VTech, Samsung and Sony.

About CEVA, Inc.

CEVA is the world's leading licensor of silicon intellectual property (SIP) DSP cores and platform solutions for the mobile, portable and consumer electronics markets. CEVA's IP portfolio includes comprehensive technologies for cellular baseband (2G / 3G / 4G), multimedia (vision, imaging and HD audio), voice processing, Bluetooth, Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) and Serial ATA (SATA). In 2012, CEVA's IP was shipped in more than 1 billion devices, powering smartphones from many of the world's leading OEMs, including HTC, Huawei, Lenovo, LG, Nokia, Motorola, Samsung, Sony, TCL and ZTE. Today, more than 40% of handsets shipped worldwide are powered by a CEVA DSP core. For more information, visit www.ceva-dsp.com. Follow CEVA on twitter at www.twitter.com/cevadsp.