“If you have a 120MHz flash device, a Cortex-M3 will do MP3 decode for 20-25MHz. An M4 can do it in less than half the MHz,” said Sadasivan. “An M4 could do 5.1 Dolby digital AC3 headset decode at 50MHz.”

Power consumption is predicted to be less than 40µW/MHz, with MP3 decode consuming 0.5mW.