Responding to the demand for increased memory and performance in advanced audio applications, Freescale has designed digital signal processing (DSP) chips that support multiple high-definition (HD) audio standards. The Symphony audio DSP56720 represents the first in a complete family of multi-core 24-bit processors from Freescale, further broadening the company's expansive audio portfolio. The DSP56720 retains code compatibility with Freescale's popular DSP56000 and DSP56300 core families of DSPs while enhancing its capabilities with many new features such as integrated S/PDIF module, an external memory controller, an embedded asynchronous sample rate converter and more audio channels. The Symphony audio DSP56720 excels at audio processing for consumer and professional audio applications requiring high million instructions per second (MIPS).For consumer applications, higher MIPS and memory requirements are driven by the new HD audio standards (Dolby Digital Plus, Dolby TrueHD, DTS-HD). The DSP56720 also provides an external memory controller to expand memory off-chip to support lip sync delays required by some consumer applications. For professional audio applications which require audio recording, signal processing and digital audio synthesis, the DSP56720 offers a solution with high performance without sacrificing on cost or power consumption and can replace a multi-DSP design with a single chip solution. The DSP56720 provides a wealth of on-chip audio processing functions, via a plug and play software architecture system which has the ability to support audio decoding algorithms as well as various post processing functions.Dual DSP56300 cores for high performance248K x 24-bit words RAMAsynchronous Sample Rate Converter (ASRC) to allow multiple data rates in a systemIntegrated S/PDIF transceiver to reduce system cost and complexityExternal Memory Controller (EMC) provides for memory expansion to cost-effective SDRAM and flexibility in system design by providing memory expansion for one or both coresEnhanced Serial Audio Interface (ESAI) – 4 modules to allow multiple sourcesDual Serial Host Interfaces (SHI) that support SPI or I2C protocols which provides high speed communication between multiple the DSP and other integrated circuits in the systemDual Triple Timer modules for a flexible, programmable timer systemDual Hardware Watchdog Timers (WDT) to allow for recovery from runaway code144LQFP Package