TrueAudio is the name given to AMD's

ASIC An application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC ) is an integrated circuit (IC) chip customized for a particular use, rather than intended for general-purpose use, such as a chip designed to run in a digital voice recorder or a high-efficien ...

intended to serve as dedicated

co-processor A coprocessor is a computer processor used to supplement the functions of the primary processor (the CPU). Operations performed by the coprocessor may be floating-point arithmetic, graphics, signal processing, string processing, cryptography ...

for the calculations of computationally expensive advanced

audio signal processing Audio signal processing is a subfield of signal processing that is concerned with the electronic manipulation of audio signals. Audio signals are electronic representations of sound waves—longitudinal waves which travel through air, consisting ...

, like e.g. convolution

reverberation Reverberation (also known as reverb), in acoustics, is a persistence of sound, after a sound is produced. Reverberation is created when a sound or signal is reflected causing numerous reflections to build up and then decay as the sound is abso ...

effects and 3D audio effects. TrueAudio is integrated into some of the AMD

GPUs A graphics processing unit (GPU) is a specialized electronic circuit designed to manipulate and alter memory to accelerate the creation of images in a frame buffer intended for output to a display device. GPUs are used in embedded systems, mobil ...

and

APUs Apus is a small constellation in the Southern Celestial Hemisphere, southern sky. It represents a bird-of-paradise, and its name means "without feet" in Greek language, Greek because the bird-of-paradise was once wrongly believed to lack feet. ...

available since 2013.

Overview

TrueAudio is a

DSP DSP may refer to: Computing * Digital signal processing, the mathematical manipulation of an information signal * Digital signal processor, a microprocessor designed for digital signal processing * Yamaha DSP-1, a proprietary digital signal ...

for audio based on Cadence Tensilica HiFi EP DSP with Tensilica Xtensa SP float support. AMD claimed that a few simple audio effects can use up to 14% of the CPU. Audiokinetic claimed that it is up to 10%.

Independent software vendor An independent software vendor (ISV), also known as a software publisher, is an organization specializing in making and selling software, as opposed to computer hardware, designed for mass or niche markets. This is in contrast to in-house software, ...

s (ISV), such as game developers, can use what is called a

Wwise Wwise (Wave Works Interactive Sound Engine) is Audiokinetic's software for interactive media and video games, available for free to non-commercial users and under license for commercial video game developers. It features an audio authoring tool and ...

audio plugin to offload such computations to the TrueAudio DSPs. The on-

die Die, as a verb, refers to death, the cessation of life. Die may also refer to: Games * Die, singular of dice, small throwable objects used for producing random numbers Manufacturing * Die (integrated circuit), a rectangular piece of a semicondu ...

TrueAudio DSPs provide a better "silicon area to computing power" ratio and "power consumption to computing power" ratio for audio processing than the CPU, effectively making it an audio acceleration unit. Any additional benefits of the TrueAudio DSPs, such as "better effects", have been severely criticized. On 18 March 2014,

AnandTech ''AnandTech'' is an online computer hardware magazine owned by Future plc. It was founded in 1997 by then-14-year-old Anand Lal Shimpi, who served as CEO and editor-in-chief until August 30, 2014, with Ryan Smith replacing him as editor-in-chief ...

evaluated AMD TrueAudio using the ''

Thief Theft is the act of taking another person's property or services without that person's permission or consent with the intent to deprive the rightful owner of it. The word ''theft'' is also used as a synonym or informal shorthand term for some ...

'' video game.

True Audio Next

A new version of TrueAudio, TrueAudio Next, was released with the

Radeon RX 400 series The Radeon 400 series is a series of graphics processors developed by AMD. These cards were the first to feature the Polaris GPUs, using the new 14 nm FinFET manufacturing process, developed by Samsung Electronics and licensed to GlobalFoundri ...

GPUs in 2016. TrueAudio Next utilizes the GPU to simulate audio physics. The move from a dedicated DSP to

GPGPU General-purpose computing on graphics processing units (GPGPU, or less often GPGP) is the use of a graphics processing unit (GPU), which typically handles computation only for computer graphics, to perform computation in applications traditiona ...

breaks compatibility with the previous TrueAudio implementation. The TrueAudio Next SDK was released as

open source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open-source model is a decentralized sof ...

through AMD's GPUOpen suite in August 2016. It also clarified that TrueAudio Next uses the GPU's

ray-casting Ray casting is the methodological basis for 3D CAD/CAM solid modeling and image rendering. It is essentially the same as ray tracing for computer graphics where virtual light rays are "cast" or "traced" on their path from the focal point of a came ...

technology to do the audio computation, and can also reserve GCN compute units for lower latency. Support for True Audio Next was added to the beta

Steam Steam is a substance containing water in the gas phase, and sometimes also an aerosol of liquid water droplets, or air. This may occur due to evaporation or due to boiling, where heat is applied until water reaches the enthalpy of vaporization ...

Application programming interface An application programming interface (API) is a way for two or more computer programs to communicate with each other. It is a type of software interface, offering a service to other pieces of software. A document or standard that describes how t ...

in February 2018.

Software support

AMD TrueAudio enables dedicated

digital signal processing Digital signal processing (DSP) is the use of digital processing, such as by computers or more specialized digital signal processors, to perform a wide variety of signal processing operations. The digital signals processed in this manner are ...

(DSP). Such dedicated audio processing horsepower is specifically for generating immersive soundscapes and saves CPU cycles that can be used for other game processing tasks such as AI and Physics. The video games '' Murdered: Soul Suspect'', ''

Star Citizen Logo Cloud Imperium Games ''Star Citizen'' is an in-development multiplayer, space trading and combat simulation game. The game is being developed and published by Cloud Imperium Games for Microsoft Windows. An extended retry of unrealized plans ...

'', ''

'' and '' Lichdom: Battlemage'' (uses

CryEngine CryEngine (stylized as CRYENGINE) is a game engine designed by the German game developer Crytek. It has been used in all of their titles with the initial version being used in ''Far Cry'', and continues to be updated to support new consoles and ...

) can be configured to use AMD TrueAudio if present. There is an audio plug-in for

Audiokinetic Audiokinetic Inc. is a Canadian software company based in Montreal, Quebec that develops audio software for the video game industry. Its main product is Wwise audio authoring software. On January 8, 2019, Sony Interactive Entertainment announced ...

(Wave Works Interactive Sound Engine) to off-load computation to the TrueAudio DSP(s). Wwise is available for

Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, which ...

OS X macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac computers. Within the market of desktop and lapt ...

Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...

PlayStation 4 The PlayStation 4 (PS4) is a home video game console developed by Sony Interactive Entertainment. Announced as the successor to the PlayStation 3 in February 2013, it was launched on November 15, 2013, in North America, November 29, 2013 in ...

Xbox One The Xbox One is a home video game console developed by Microsoft. Announced in May 2013, it is the successor to Xbox 360 and the third base console in the Xbox series of video game consoles. It was first released in North America, parts of ...

et al. GenAudio's AstoundSound, a highly optimized collection of advanced

C++ C++ (pronounced "C plus plus") is a high-level general-purpose programming language created by Danish computer scientist Bjarne Stroustrup as an extension of the C programming language, or "C with Classes". The language has expanded significan ...

software available as a

library A library is a collection of materials, books or media that are accessible for use and not just for display purposes. A library provides physical (hard copies) or digital access (soft copies) materials, and may be a physical location or a vir ...

or a plugin for augmenting real-time audio engines on Linux, OS X, Windows as well as Android and iOS, can make use of AMD TrueAudio. AstoundSound is also wrapped for several plug-in formats, such as RTAS and

and has been integrated into several DSP chips. AstoundSound is described as fully programmable audio engine. As of July 2014 there are no news regarding products supporting TrueAudio and

LV2 LV2 (LADSPA Version 2) is a set of royalty-free open standards for plug-in (computing), plug-ins and matching host applications. It includes support for the audio synthesis, synthesis and digital signal processing, processing of digital audio and ...

Driver support

AMD has retired AMD TrueAudio Technology support with Radeon Software Crimson Edition 16.40 and introduced a new way for developers to support AMD TrueAudio Technology like features with AMD TrueAudio Next. There is a beta cross-platform support since end of 2019 and in 2021 it's still a pull request but now this branch configured as default and compiles on Windows, Linux, and MacOS using CMake.

Availability

AMD TrueAudio is found on-

of select AMD graphics cards and APUs. A die can house multiple AMD TrueAudio DSP cores, each having 32KiB instruction and data caches and 8KiB of

scratchpad memory Scratchpad memory (SPM), also known as scratchpad, scratchpad RAM or local store in computer terminology, is a high-speed internal memory used for temporary storage of calculations, data, and other work in progress. In reference to a microprocess ...

for local operation. AMD TrueAudio SIP blocks are found on the dies of some GPUs of the

AMD Radeon Rx 200 Series The Radeon 200 series is a series of graphics processors developed by AMD. These GPUs are manufactured on a 28 nm Gate-Last process through TSMC or Common Platform Alliance. Release The Rx 200 series was announced on September 25, 2013, ...

; namely the Radeon R7 260, Radeon R7 260X, Radeon R9 285, Radeon R9 290, Radeon R9 290X and the Radeon R9 295X2, and in Kaveri and Carrizo-based APUs. TrueAudio is also supported by the

hardware. Some

I²S I²S (Inter-IC Sound, pronounced "eye-squared-ess"), is an electrical serial bus interface standard used for connecting digital audio devices together. It is used to communicate PCM audio data between integrated circuits in an electronic device ...

solution is being used.

References

External links

* {{AMD processors Advanced Micro Devices IP cores Audio acceleration