My first official KarmaWhoring action.
by
Trelane,+the+Squire
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· Score: 0, Informative
FineArch, Inc., Tokyo Japan based semiconductor LSI design company, developed the system IP to decode the next generation digital music compression format, Ogg Vorbis(http://www. vorbis.com). FineArch successfully completed the Ogg vorbis sytstem IP to run at 12 Mhz. This is about 1/6 of the clock speed required to decode Ogg Vorbis with a single CPU system. This ultra low power IP fits well with the today's portable music player market where battery life is critical factor.
Ogg Vorbis is attracting much attention to the digital music world as a "license and royalty free" compression format. Ogg Vorbis is also known as its higher quality, higher compression ratio compared to MP3, current standard of the compression music format. Encoding and decoding process of Ogg Vorbis is more CPU intensive task than those of MP3. Hardware implementation of Ogg Vorbis has been scarce. FineArch.Inc fully noted the potential of the Ogg Vorbis, developed the Ogg Vorbis playback System IP.
This "System IP" consisted of Hardwared IP and Software IP which needed to build a portable music player. It has all the necessary components to build a standard portable music player.
"Hardware IP" includes "MultiCore Architecture"; CPU and DSP, Memory card interface, External memory interface, LCD controller, and Key input function. Only external memory and audio D/A converter is needed to build a complete portable player system.
"Software IP" includes DSP firmware do decode Ogg vorbis and the CPU firmware for overall system control. Fully utilizing the advantage of MultiCore architecture system sofware stacks are carefully distributed to CPU and DSP, achieving 12 MHz. This is the lowest system clock speed in the industry known today.
This "System IP" will be licensed to any customers looking for the royalty free, high quality digital music decoding capabilities on their system. Such system includes the portable music player,the game console, PDA, and the portable music entertainment system. FineArch also has the FPGA evaluation kit, which can be ordered directly.
in case of slashdotting by rabid mp3 advocates;)
do I get a cake?
portables
by
h4x0r-3l337
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· Score: 5, Informative
Hopefully we will see portable players very soon now
Consider yourself corrected... Digital Innovations (makers of the Neruos) and Xiph.org have a working beta called Positron that allows you to synchronize your Neuros to Linux (and not limited to Linux necessarily, it uses Python and should be portable). From beta reports on the forums Positron is working nicely and should be out of beta soon.
However, this/. article was about -dedicated- Ogg Vorbis hardware and the Neuros uses a multipurpose CPU. It makes the Neuros more flexible but the dedicated chip would be cheaper. Both have their places.
-- It is more productive to voice thoughtful opinions (reply) than to judge (moderate) others.
Who needs a chip?
by
bytesmythe
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· Score: 4, Informative
What rock have you been living under: Ogg Vorbis is a new audio compression format. It is roughly comparable to other formats used to store and play digital music, such as MP3, VQF, AAC, and other digital audio formats. It is different from these other formats because it is completely free, open, and unpatented.
Ogg Ogg is the name of Xiph.org's container format for audio, video, and metadata. Vorbis Vorbis is the name of a specific audio compression scheme that's designed to be contained in Ogg. Note that other formats are capable of being embedded in Ogg such as FLAC and Speex.
Links to more information...
by
n0nsensical
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· Score: 5, Informative
What's so special about that? These guys have done something similar before as a university project: http://oggonachip.sourceforge.net/
And probably others have done this as well.
Re:Is it needed?
by
n0nsensical
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· Score: 3, Informative
Is Ogg clearer or cheaper or have smaller file sizes?
All of the above. You get better sound at lower bitrates royalty-free.
Do p2p for Ogg exist?
Not sure about Kazaa, etc., but I do see.oggs occasionally on SoulSeek.
If someone like myself was going to convert my mp3's (if that is even possible) not only would it take a good amount of time, I'd no longer be able to share files with my peers as not a soul I know owns a single Ogg file.
You wouldn't want to bother converting them because the resulting sound quality would be worse than the original MP3s, so you'd have to rip them again. (Since you do own the original CDs, don't you?) Nothing's stopping you from sharing files though, since any self-respecting software player (including Winamp, but I prefer Quintessential) plays oggs fine. Hardware, of course, is a different story.
Re:Is it needed?
by
stonecypher
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· Score: 4, Informative
Is Ogg clearer or cheaper or have smaller file sizes?
Yes to all three. The sound quality is better than VQF, MP3, AAC, or WMF for the size. It's an opensource codec, so it has no patent encumberments. The files tend to be smaller because people encode (usually) at the minimum size to catch a CD quality track. Moreover, you can thumb your nose at Frauenhoffer.
Do p2p for Ogg exist?
Peer to peer exists for arbitrary files; therefore, for any such question, yes. Hell, you can also share them over the web, on CDs, or with smoke signals.
However, in answer to what I expect the real question is, no, they're quite a bit more difficult to find than MP3s. MP3 is very entrenched, it's the one people that aren't activists know about, and it's the one that nobody wants to spend the time crosscoding from (both because it's time consuming/boring and because the crosscoding leaves you with a file with the errors of *both* formats, and it's a noticable downgrade; people should start from the CD again, but nobody wants to do that.)
To be honest, I believe this chip's strongest market is in players that can handle MP3, Ogg with vorbis, speex, etc, WMF, and so on. The question isn't whether you start over. It's whether you move on with legacy support.
And that's pretty much how we've always done it, right? I don't make MP3s anymore.
I'd no longer be able to share files with my peers
Wrong. It doesn't matter if they have one already. It matters if their player can use them. Almost all players can (Winamp, and... well, who really uses anything else?:D )
Reprogrammable? It is.
by
pclminion
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· Score: 3, Informative
Did you actually read the article?
"Software IP" includes DSP firmware do decode Ogg vorbis and the CPU firmware for overall system control.
Basically, it's designed how it should be designed: seperate CPU and DSP cores, and both are independently programmable. It would be incredibly stupid to design a "pure" hardware solution (decoder in silico) since everyone admits that Vorbis is going to evolve and change, especially right now, during its "adolescent" period.
Don't worry, they've done the right thing:-)
Re:Floating point?
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 2, Informative
From xiph.org:
"Tremor" integer-only codec now under BSD license The "Tremor" decoder library, an integer-only, fully Ogg Vorbis compliant software decoder library is now available under a totally free BSD-like free software license.
They have the integer decoder. It's FREE. BUT, it takes a hefty CPU to do it.
If someone wants to use the xiph FP decoder, it's there for them, too.
I don't think you have to worry about interger ops being done as floats, unless there is a specific performance advantage that comes about because of it. But there is'nt going to be one, so calm down chicken little.
Remember, just because Ogg Vorbis is (royalty) free doesn't mean that the player is royalty free. The point of royalty free is that Ogg Vorbis player manufacturers don't have to pay royalties to Xiph. This (hopefully) gives the end user a cheaper product. Of course it also allows OSS developers to create ogg vorbis players without having to worry about having to pay royalties.
-- ...interesting if true.
Low clock rate != Low power
by
pslam
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· Score: 3, Informative
It's generally true that low clock speed gives you low power, but when you're throwing a custom core at a problem, that's not necessarily true. The amount of power is basically proportional to the number of gates you have to switch. If you're running at 1/4 the clock speed, but you're switching 4 times as many gates, you'll probably end up with the same power requirement. Put simply: imagine running 4 processors in parallel at 1/4 the clock speed - assuming perfect parallelism, I'd say it'd still take at least as much power. If you run into limits such as having to turn up the voltage at higher clocks, that's another matter, but at these clock speeds it's not a major factor.
The trick is they have is a single issue RISC core (1 instruction per clock) running in parallel with a 4 issue VLIW DSP core (4 instructions per clock). Assuming it's all running at peak rate (which it hopefully will be for the majority of time) that's about 60 MIPS of processing going on there for a 64kbit Vorbis stream. Compare that to an ARM7TDMI (which a lot of players are based on), which requires (ball park) 30-50MHz for the same stream. The figure they state of 74MHz is nonsense - that's the general class of processor you require, not the actual MHz. You'll find higher bit rates requiring most of that 74MHz, though.
If they can come up with a real piece of hardware or a simulation that says it takes less than 100-200mW in an actual system, then I'll be impressed. That's about how much your average MP3 player takes. (Power = Battery mAh * Battery Voltage / Time in hours, work out how much yours takes). Just having a low clock speed is as incomplete a power consumption picture as Intel's use of high clock speeds alone is to performance.
If OV ever gets popular...
by
PylonHead
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· Score: 3, Informative
Then we'll find out whether they infringe on any patents. Remember this article:
clicky , clicky News.com from 2000
The Ogg developers staunchly defend the notion that they have created everything from scratch, or at least have built their system without using any of the Fraunhofer-owned technology. But their rivals say they aren't so sure.
"We doubt very much that they are not using Fraunhofer and Thomson intellectual property," Linde said. "We think it is likely they are infringing."
Whether this is true, analysts say Thomson and the German company are likely to file patent lawsuits the moment Vorbis appears to be a viable market candidate. By creating a perception of uncertainty around Vorbis' future, MP3's parents could prevent conservative digital music companies from adopting it.
"If you're going to go into a marketplace where people play hardball, that's what hardball looks like," Scheirer warned.
-- # (/.);;
- : float -> float -> float =
Re:Why would you want this?
by
brejc8
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· Score: 2, Informative
Actually they havent any specific hardware and it is just a cpu and a dsp. But specific hardware is very good for your size and power consumption. You consume less power because instead of for example working out a sin function with software you have a piece of hardware to do it. You save on power because youre not wasting it on fetching instructions and running your circuit extra fast and on maybe a little on area as you have just made your memory requirements little smaller.
Currently with ultra low feature size technology and memory for free you can easily get away with just using a simple CPU. After all its cheaper than putting in some effort. But this is a reason why my mp3 player only lasts a couple of hours on an aaa battery.
Re:2 Many formats...2 Much Work
by
chunkwhite86
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· Score: 2, Informative
Besides the fact that this is an obvious troll, I feel compelled to correct some of these points.
I know this is about competition or as Microsoft spins it..."The ability to innovate" but it's hell for Joe Average who doesn't know what a hard drive is much less ogg, encode, decode, bitrate, etc.
How exactly is it hell for joe average? All the modern media players support all the modern formats. Joe Average doesn't need to know the difference.
The rest should be tossed so we can have the best players and quality formats that will improve exponentially.
If as you propose, all the music formats are eliminated except one, it will cause quality and file size to NOT improve. When has Microsoft innovated when faced with 0 competition? Never.
Mp3 and ogg are great formats but the Microsoft version of the mp3 formats so we should just concentrate on those and refining the quality and file size.
And just how do you propose that we "concentrate on those and refining the quality and file size" on a closed source microsoft proprietary format?
Sorry troll, Ogg is the only way to go.
-- I'd rather be a conservative nutjob than a liberal with no nuts and no job.
Re:Floating point?
by
TheCrazyFinn
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· Score: 2, Informative
No, it's because many low power CPU's for embedded work don't have an FPU and are impossible to use as the basis for a Ogg Player (Not that there's even a market for one)
-- "You've got an invalid haircut"
-Warren Zevon - Life'll Kill Ya
Re:Wow, very low power!
by
m0rbidini
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· Score: 3, Informative
The current implementation (12 MHz) is limited to 64 kbps. For more, a higher frequency is needed.
http://www.xiph.org/archives/vorbis/200307/0242. ht ml
cya
Re:Excellent!
by
m0rbidini
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· Score: 2, Informative
"but can it penetrate a mass market?"
Ogg Vorbis is now the third most used lossy format (in audio only, not counting movie rips and etc..), following mp3 and wma.
MP3 is losing users to other formats, such as Ogg Vorbis, Musepack and AAC. Everyone watching P2P (:O) networks can note this. There're already release groups that only release in one these formats (Ogg Vorbis or Musepack).
Disadvantages of MP3:
- MP3 can't be gapless. - No standard tagging system (id3 is not in the specs). - Ogg Vorbis and Musepack have way better VBR so less bits are wasted where they are not needed and VBR limited to 320kbps. - No sample-accurate seeking.
Slashdot Mirror
FineArch, Inc., Tokyo Japan based semiconductor LSI design company, developed the system IP to decode the next generation digital music compression format, Ogg Vorbis(http://www. vorbis.com). FineArch successfully completed the Ogg vorbis sytstem IP to run at 12 Mhz. This is about 1/6 of the clock speed required to decode Ogg Vorbis with a single CPU system. This ultra low power IP fits well with the today's portable music player market where battery life is critical factor. Ogg Vorbis is attracting much attention to the digital music world as a "license and royalty free" compression format. Ogg Vorbis is also known as its higher quality, higher compression ratio compared to MP3, current standard of the compression music format. Encoding and decoding process of Ogg Vorbis is more CPU intensive task than those of MP3. Hardware implementation of Ogg Vorbis has been scarce. FineArch.Inc fully noted the potential of the Ogg Vorbis, developed the Ogg Vorbis playback System IP. This "System IP" consisted of Hardwared IP and Software IP which needed to build a portable music player. It has all the necessary components to build a standard portable music player. "Hardware IP" includes "MultiCore Architecture"; CPU and DSP, Memory card interface, External memory interface, LCD controller, and Key input function. Only external memory and audio D/A converter is needed to build a complete portable player system. "Software IP" includes DSP firmware do decode Ogg vorbis and the CPU firmware for overall system control. Fully utilizing the advantage of MultiCore architecture system sofware stacks are carefully distributed to CPU and DSP, achieving 12 MHz. This is the lowest system clock speed in the industry known today. This "System IP" will be licensed to any customers looking for the royalty free, high quality digital music decoding capabilities on their system. Such system includes the portable music player,the game console, PDA, and the portable music entertainment system. FineArch also has the FPGA evaluation kit, which can be ordered directly. in case of slashdotting by rabid mp3 advocates ;)
do I get a cake?
One already exists
The Vorbis team is working with the makers of Neuros to update the player's firmware to decode Ogg Vorbis files.
It's nearly complete.
bytesmythe
Hypocrisy is the resin that holds the plywood of society together.
-- Scott Meyer
In not sure if it will hold for much longer so heres a mirror.
Mouse powered Chips, Open source Processors and Lego
What rock have you been living under:
Ogg Vorbis is a new audio compression format. It is roughly comparable to other formats used to store and play digital music, such as MP3, VQF, AAC, and other digital audio formats. It is different from these other formats because it is completely free, open, and unpatented.
Ogg
Ogg is the name of Xiph.org's container format for audio, video, and metadata.
Vorbis
Vorbis is the name of a specific audio compression scheme that's designed to be contained in Ogg. Note that other formats are capable of being embedded in Ogg such as FLAC and Speex.
Here are the "more information" PDFs so you don't have to fill out the form...
Press release on 2003/7/15 (English) Ogg Vorbis Player System
Press release on 2003/7/15 (Korean)Ogg Vorbis Player System
Ogg Vorbis player system product summary
There is also open collector.
Mouse powered Chips, Open source Processors and Lego
What's so special about that? These guys have done something similar before as a university project: http://oggonachip.sourceforge.net/
And probably others have done this as well.
Is Ogg clearer or cheaper or have smaller file sizes?
.oggs occasionally on SoulSeek.
All of the above. You get better sound at lower bitrates royalty-free.
Do p2p for Ogg exist?
Not sure about Kazaa, etc., but I do see
If someone like myself was going to convert my mp3's (if that is even possible) not only would it take a good amount of time, I'd no longer be able to share files with my peers as not a soul I know owns a single Ogg file.
You wouldn't want to bother converting them because the resulting sound quality would be worse than the original MP3s, so you'd have to rip them again. (Since you do own the original CDs, don't you?) Nothing's stopping you from sharing files though, since any self-respecting software player (including Winamp, but I prefer Quintessential) plays oggs fine. Hardware, of course, is a different story.
Is Ogg clearer or cheaper or have smaller file sizes?
... well, who really uses anything else? :D )
Yes to all three. The sound quality is better than VQF, MP3, AAC, or WMF for the size. It's an opensource codec, so it has no patent encumberments. The files tend to be smaller because people encode (usually) at the minimum size to catch a CD quality track. Moreover, you can thumb your nose at Frauenhoffer.
Do p2p for Ogg exist?
Peer to peer exists for arbitrary files; therefore, for any such question, yes. Hell, you can also share them over the web, on CDs, or with smoke signals.
However, in answer to what I expect the real question is, no, they're quite a bit more difficult to find than MP3s. MP3 is very entrenched, it's the one people that aren't activists know about, and it's the one that nobody wants to spend the time crosscoding from (both because it's time consuming/boring and because the crosscoding leaves you with a file with the errors of *both* formats, and it's a noticable downgrade; people should start from the CD again, but nobody wants to do that.)
To be honest, I believe this chip's strongest market is in players that can handle MP3, Ogg with vorbis, speex, etc, WMF, and so on. The question isn't whether you start over. It's whether you move on with legacy support.
And that's pretty much how we've always done it, right? I don't make MP3s anymore.
I'd no longer be able to share files with my peers
Wrong. It doesn't matter if they have one already. It matters if their player can use them. Almost all players can (Winamp, and
StoneCypher is Full of BS
"Software IP" includes DSP firmware do decode Ogg vorbis and the CPU firmware for overall system control.
Basically, it's designed how it should be designed: seperate CPU and DSP cores, and both are independently programmable. It would be incredibly stupid to design a "pure" hardware solution (decoder in silico) since everyone admits that Vorbis is going to evolve and change, especially right now, during its "adolescent" period.
Don't worry, they've done the right thing :-)
From xiph.org:
"Tremor" integer-only codec now under BSD license
The "Tremor" decoder library, an integer-only, fully Ogg Vorbis compliant software decoder library is now available under a totally free BSD-like free software license.
They have the integer decoder. It's FREE. BUT, it takes a hefty CPU to do it.
If someone wants to use the xiph FP decoder, it's there for them, too.
I don't think you have to worry about interger ops being done as floats, unless there is a specific performance advantage that comes about because of it. But there is'nt going to be one, so calm down chicken little.
Remember, just because Ogg Vorbis is (royalty) free doesn't mean that the player is royalty free. The point of royalty free is that Ogg Vorbis player manufacturers don't have to pay royalties to Xiph. This (hopefully) gives the end user a cheaper product. Of course it also allows OSS developers to create ogg vorbis players without having to worry about having to pay royalties.
...interesting if true.
The trick is they have is a single issue RISC core (1 instruction per clock) running in parallel with a 4 issue VLIW DSP core (4 instructions per clock). Assuming it's all running at peak rate (which it hopefully will be for the majority of time) that's about 60 MIPS of processing going on there for a 64kbit Vorbis stream. Compare that to an ARM7TDMI (which a lot of players are based on), which requires (ball park) 30-50MHz for the same stream. The figure they state of 74MHz is nonsense - that's the general class of processor you require, not the actual MHz. You'll find higher bit rates requiring most of that 74MHz, though.
If they can come up with a real piece of hardware or a simulation that says it takes less than 100-200mW in an actual system, then I'll be impressed. That's about how much your average MP3 player takes. (Power = Battery mAh * Battery Voltage / Time in hours, work out how much yours takes). Just having a low clock speed is as incomplete a power consumption picture as Intel's use of high clock speeds alone is to performance.
Then we'll find out whether they infringe on any patents. Remember this article:
clicky , clicky News.com from 2000
The Ogg developers staunchly defend the notion that they have created everything from scratch, or at least have built their system without using any of the Fraunhofer-owned technology. But their rivals say they aren't so sure.
"We doubt very much that they are not using Fraunhofer and Thomson intellectual property," Linde said. "We think it is likely they are infringing."
Whether this is true, analysts say Thomson and the German company are likely to file patent lawsuits the moment Vorbis appears to be a viable market candidate. By creating a perception of uncertainty around Vorbis' future, MP3's parents could prevent conservative digital music companies from adopting it.
"If you're going to go into a marketplace where people play hardball, that's what hardball looks like," Scheirer warned.
# (/.);;
- : float -> float -> float =
Actually they havent any specific hardware and it is just a cpu and a dsp. But specific hardware is very good for your size and power consumption. You consume less power because instead of for example working out a sin function with software you have a piece of hardware to do it. You save on power because youre not wasting it on fetching instructions and running your circuit extra fast and on maybe a little on area as you have just made your memory requirements little smaller.
Currently with ultra low feature size technology and memory for free you can easily get away with just using a simple CPU. After all its cheaper than putting in some effort. But this is a reason why my mp3 player only lasts a couple of hours on an aaa battery.
Mouse powered Chips, Open source Processors and Lego
Besides the fact that this is an obvious troll, I feel compelled to correct some of these points.
I know this is about competition or as Microsoft spins it..."The ability to innovate" but it's hell for Joe Average who doesn't know what a hard drive is much less ogg, encode, decode, bitrate, etc.
How exactly is it hell for joe average? All the modern media players support all the modern formats. Joe Average doesn't need to know the difference.
The rest should be tossed so we can have the best players and quality formats that will improve exponentially.
If as you propose, all the music formats are eliminated except one, it will cause quality and file size to NOT improve. When has Microsoft innovated when faced with 0 competition? Never.
Mp3 and ogg are great formats but the Microsoft version of the mp3 formats so we should just concentrate on those and refining the quality and file size.
And just how do you propose that we "concentrate on those and refining the quality and file size" on a closed source microsoft proprietary format?
Sorry troll, Ogg is the only way to go.
I'd rather be a conservative nutjob than a liberal with no nuts and no job.
No, it's because many low power CPU's for embedded work don't have an FPU and are impossible to use as the basis for a Ogg Player (Not that there's even a market for one)
"You've got an invalid haircut" -Warren Zevon - Life'll Kill Ya
The current implementation (12 MHz) is limited to 64 kbps. For more, a higher frequency is needed.
. ht ml
http://www.xiph.org/archives/vorbis/200307/0242
cya
Ogg Vorbis is now the third most used lossy format (in audio only, not counting movie rips and etc..), following mp3 and wma.
MP3 is losing users to other formats, such as Ogg Vorbis, Musepack and AAC. Everyone watching P2P (:O) networks can note this. There're already release groups that only release in one these formats (Ogg Vorbis or Musepack).
Disadvantages of MP3:
- MP3 can't be gapless.
- No standard tagging system (id3 is not in the specs).
- Ogg Vorbis and Musepack have way better VBR so less bits are wasted where they are not needed and VBR limited to 320kbps.
- No sample-accurate seeking.
cya