 | |
| Design firm | Nvidia |
|---|---|
| Type | Chipsets |
| Processor | nForce/nForce2 |
SoundStorm is a brand by Nvidia referring to a SIP block integrating 5.1 surround sound technology found on the die of their nForce and nForce2 chipsets for x86 CPUs. It is also the name of a certification to be obtained from Nvidia when complying with their specifications.
The SoundStorm certification ensured that many manufacturers produced solutions with high quality sound output. To achieve SoundStorm certification, a motherboard had to use the nForce or nForce2 chipsets and also include the specified discrete outputs. It was also necessary to meet certain sound quality levels as tested by Dolby Digital sound labs.
At the time[ when? ] SoundStorm was the only available solution capable of outputting Dolby Digital Live, coveted in home theater PCs.
The SoundStorm SIP block is said to consist of a series of fixed-function and general-purpose processing units. A fully programmable, Motorola 56300-based digital signal processor (DSP) is provided for effects processing but with very limited support under DirectX on the PC.
The DSP on the APU was normally driven by code largely derived from the 3D audio middleware company Sensaura. The Sensaura middleware was also used by the Windows drivers of nearly every sound card and audio codec other than those by Creative. Unlike the usual software implementations of the Sensaura code, the SoundStorm solution ran the same code on a hardware DSP, which resulted in extremely low CPU usage.[ citation needed ] It was also capable of real-time Dolby Digital 5.1 encoding. Compared to other audio solutions of the day, the difference in CPU usage when running popular multimedia applications was as much as 10-20%. While the Audigy offers similar performance, it does so at a much higher price point, and only as a discrete add-in solution. [1]
The nForce2 APU was a purely digital component, with motherboard manufacturers still having to use codec chips such as the 650 from Realtek for the audio output functions, and to do the necessary digital to analog conversion (DAC).[ citation needed ] After the discontinuation of SoundStorm, codec chips such as the Realtek 850 have become standard integrated audio solutions, with audio processing functions offloaded onto the host processor. As such, the quality of the device drivers is important to ensure reasonably low host processor usage, without audio quality issues.
Since the SoundStorm solution was a general-purpose DSP where code was uploaded to the card by the device drivers at boot time, this made it easy to add new functionality. However, it also had implications of preventing third-party device drivers for the SoundStorm, since they did not have access to the DSP code.[ citation needed ] Linux drivers for the SoundStorm actually talk directly to the audio codec (like a RealTek ALC650), bypassing the APU completely and doing all audio calculations on the CPU and leaving the SoundStorm DSP idle.
Reportedly, SoundStorm development was originally funded by Microsoft for use in the Xbox gaming console. At the time of writing[ when? ] reportedly a second generation chip had been developed, this time with funding from Sony, as part of the PlayStation 3 project. [2] It was hinted that SoundStorm may make return to the PC scene, possibly as part of a multimedia graphics card, along the lines of the original NV1 card, rather than as a discrete or onboard solution.[ citation needed ] While there did appear to be plans for a discrete product at one point, this never materialised.
Nvidia decided the cost of including the SoundStorm SIP block on the dies of their chipsets was too high and was not included in nForce3 and beyond.[ citation needed ]
Other manufacturers have since produced standalone sound cards based on C-Media chips such as the CMI8788 [3] which also provide Dolby Digital and DTS encoding features. These manufacturers include Turtle Beach [4] and Auzentech. [5] A software alternative is redocneXk, [6] which provides real-time AC3 encoding comparable to SoundStorm or Creative's Audigy2 and later sound cards.
In October 2013 AMD presented products with AMD TrueAudio. A block of DSPs to be used to offload calculations for 3D sound.
Dolby Digital, originally synonymous with Dolby AC-3, is the name for a family of audio compression technologies developed by Dolby Laboratories. Called Dolby Stereo Digital until 1995, it is lossy compression. The first use of Dolby Digital was to provide digital sound in cinemas from 35 mm film prints. It has since also been used for TV broadcast, radio broadcast via satellite, digital video streaming, DVDs, Blu-ray discs and game consoles.
Sound Blaster is a family of sound cards and audio peripherals designed by Singaporean technology company Creative Technology. The first Sound Blaster card was introduced in 1989.
nForce is a motherboard chipset created by Nvidia originally for AMD Athlon and Duron, with later revisions also supporting contemporary Intel processors. The chipset shipped in 3 varieties; 220, 415, and 420. 220 and 420 are very similar with each having the integrated GPU, but the 220 only has a single channel of memory available whereas 420 has the 128-bit TwinBank design. The 415 variant again has the dual-channel memory interface, but has no integrated graphics.
The Nvidia nForce2 chipset was released by Nvidia in July 2002 as a refresh to the original nForce product offering. The nForce2 chipset was a platform for motherboards supporting AMD's Socket A CPUs along with DDR SDRAM. There were multiple variations of the chipset including one with an integrated GeForce4 MX graphics processor (IGP), and one without.
The Environmental Audio Extensions are a number of digital signal processing presets for audio, present in Creative Technology Sound Blaster sound cards starting with the Sound Blaster Live and the Creative NOMAD/Creative ZEN product lines. Due to the release of Windows Vista in 2007, which deprecated the DirectSound3D API that EAX was based on, Creative discouraged EAX implementation in favour of its OpenAL-based EFX equivalent – though at that point relatively few games used the API.
The nForce4 is a motherboard chipset released by Nvidia in October 2004. The chipset supports AMD 64-bit processors and Intel Pentium 4 LGA 775 processors.
The nForce3 chipset was created by Nvidia as a Media and Communications Processor. Specifically, it was designed for use with the Athlon 64 processor.
Intel High Definition Audio (IHDA) (also called HD Audio or development codename Azalia) is a specification for the audio sub-system of personal computers. It was released by Intel in 2004 as the successor to their AC'97 PC audio standard.
E-MU 20K is the commercial name for a line of audio chips by Creative Technology, commercially known as the Sound Blaster X-Fi chipset. The series comprises the E-MU 20K1 (CA20K1) and E-MU 20K2 (CA20K2) audio chips.
ATI Avivo is a set of hardware and low level software features present on the ATI Radeon R520 family of GPUs and all later ATI Radeon products. ATI Avivo was designed to offload video decoding, encoding, and post-processing from a computer's CPU to a compatible GPU. ATI Avivo compatible GPUs have lower CPU usage when a player and decoder software that support ATI Avivo is used. ATI Avivo has been long superseded by Unified Video Decoder (UVD) and Video Coding Engine (VCE).
Sensaura Ltd., a division of Creative Technology, was a company that provided 3D audio effect technology for the interactive entertainment industry. Sensaura technology was shipped on more than 24 million game consoles and 150 million PCs. Formed in 1991, Sensaura developed a range of technologies for incorporating 3D audio into PC's and consoles.
Sound Blaster Audigy is a product line of sound cards from Creative Technology. The flagship model of the Audigy family used the EMU10K2 audio DSP, an improved version of the SB-Live's EMU10K1, while the value/SE editions were built with a less-expensive audio controller.
Tensilica Inc. was a company based in Silicon Valley in the semiconductor intellectual property core business. It is now a part of Cadence Design Systems.
Auzentech was a Korean computer hardware manufacturer that specialized in high-definition audio equipment and in particular PC sound cards.
GPU switching is a mechanism used on computers with multiple graphic controllers. This mechanism allows the user to either maximize the graphic performance or prolong battery life by switching between the graphic cards. It is mostly used on gaming laptops which usually have an integrated graphic device and a discrete video card.
The Xbox technical specifications describe the various components of the Xbox video game console.
Video Code Engine is AMD's video encoding application-specific integrated circuit implementing the video codec H.264/MPEG-4 AVC. Since 2012 it was integrated into all of their GPUs and APUs except Oland.
TrueAudio is AMD's application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) intended to serve as dedicated co-processor for the calculations of computationally expensive advanced audio signal processing, such as convolution reverberation effects and 3D audio effects. TrueAudio is integrated into some of the AMD GPUs and APUs available since 2013.
Video Core Next is AMD's brand for its dedicated video encoding and decoding hardware core. It is a family of hardware accelerator designs for encoding and decoding video, and is built into AMD's GPUs and APUs since AMD Raven Ridge, released January 2018.