Use cases

Analog Devices Digital Signal Processors (ADSP) are industry standards for both automotive and consumer audio.

Professional & Consumer Audio

Neural DSP Quad Cortex

The Neural DSP Quad Cortex is a flagship floorboard amp modeler that utilizes the ADSP-SC589 (Quad-Core SHARC+). The dual SHARC+ cores provide the high-performance floating-point processing required for neural capture, an AI-driven process that replicates physical amplifiers and effects with extreme accuracy. The integrated ARM Cortex-A5 core manages the Linux-based multi-touch UI, while the SHARC+ cores handle real-time audio processing at extremely low latency.

Audinate Dante networking

The Dante Embedded Platform (DEP) is available as a software-based solution for ADSP-SC5xx processors. Manufacturers can integrate high-performance Dante audio-over-IP networking directly onto the chip’s ARM core. This provides a single-chip solution for low-latency networked audio, eliminating the need for separate hardware modules in professional AV systems.

Automotive

Modern vehicles use high-performance SHARC+ processors (like the SC59x series) to manage complex cabin acoustics.

  • Road Noise Cancellation (RNC): SHARC+ processors generate anti-noise signals in real-time to cancel tire and road vibrations. This requires the extremely low deterministic latency provided by the SHARC architecture.

  • In-Car Communications (ICC): Uses beamforming and noise reduction to allow passengers to speak clearly across the cabin without shouting.

  • Personal Audio Zones (PAZ): Creates localized “sound bubbles” for individual passengers, allowing different audio streams (calls, music, navigation) to be heard without headphones or disturbing others.

  • Electric Vehicle (EV) Sound: Handles Engine Sound Synthesis (ESS) for driver feedback and Acoustic Vehicle Alerting Systems (AVAS) to ensure pedestrian safety at low speeds.

Automotive Grade Linux

Automotive Grade Linux is a project under The Linux Foundation that defines a full software stack for vehicles. It classically targets infotainment systems, but in 2026 expanded support to the Electronic Control Unit (ECU) of vehicles. It provides a complex layering of software based on virtualization technologies, making application development easier and safer.

ADSP SoCs are far more resource constrained than the processors that AGL is targeting. Additionally, in order to optimize the performance of the ADSP SoCs many tasks done by Linux in AGL are off-loaded from the ARM cores to the DSP cores (e.g. EAVB, A2B).