A VLSI implementation of a low-power DSP core is described, which is dedicated to the G. 723. 1 low bitrate speech codec. A number of sophisticated DSP microarchitectures are devised mainly on dual multiply accumulators, rounding and saturation mechanisms, and two-banked on-chip memory. The main attempt is focused on lowering the clock frequency, and therefore on reducing the total power consumption, at the cost of a fairly small increase of chip area. The proposed DSP architecture has been integrated in the total area of 7. 75 mm2 by using a 0. 35 µm CMOS technology, which can operate at 10 MHz with the dissipation of 44. 9 mW from a single 3 V supply.