Off-host Audio Engine Interface for CPU Load Reduction
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Solution Overview
Problem
Audio processing on central processing units (CPUs) is computationally intensive, leading to high power consumption, increased probability of audio glitching, and reduced battery life in mobile devices.
Innovation Solution
Offloading audio processing from the host CPU to a digital signal processor (DSP) or dedicated hardware by exposing audio processing capabilities of an off-host audio engine to the host, allowing for audio mixing, decoding, applying effects, and volume control on a per-stream and per-device basis.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Use of energy by moving object
If audio processing is performed on the host CPU, then audio processing functionality is provided, but power consumption increases and battery life decreases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent segments audio processing functionality from the host CPU by introducing a separate audio processing unit (APU) or digital signal processor (DSP). This dedicated hardware component handles audio-specific tasks independently, reducing the computational burden on the main CPU while providing specialized optimization for audio processing operations, thereby lowering overall power consumption and improving audio processing reliability.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent introduces an audio processing unit as an intermediary component between the host CPU and audio output devices. This APU/DSP acts as a mediator that receives audio data from the CPU, performs dedicated audio processing operations, and outputs processed audio signals, thereby offloading computational tasks and reducing power consumption while improving audio processing capability.
2Productivity
If audio processing is offloaded to dedicated hardware, then processing efficiency improves, but device complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent designs the audio processing unit to perform multiple audio processing functions including decoding, mixing, effects processing, and format conversion within a single hardware component. This multi-functional approach enables dedicated hardware processing without proportionally increasing device complexity, as one APU/DSP can handle various audio processing tasks that would otherwise require multiple separate processing units.
Data Source
AI summary
An off-host audio engine interface exposes audio processing capabilities to a host. The interface receives offloaded audio streams and a host-processed audio stream from the host. The off-host audio engine processes the offloaded audio streams individually to create off-host-processed audio streams. The host-processed audio stream is mixed with the off-host-processed streams to create a mixed stream. The mixed stream undergoes audio processing by the off-host engine. The off-host audio engine provides output and reference audio streams based on the mixed audio stream. The reference stream can be provided to the host via the interface. Via the interface, the host can control local and global audio processing performed by the off-host engine by enabling or disabling local and global processing, and by enabling or disabling local and global audio processing components of the off-host audio engine.