Abstract: Multi-core architectures are widely used to enhance the microprocessor performance within a limited increase in time-to-market and power consumption of the chips. Toward the application of high-density data signal processing, this paper presents a novel heterogeneous multi-core architecture digital signal processor (DSP), YHFT-QDSP, with one RISC CPU core and 4 VLIW DSP cores. By three kinds of interconnection, YHFT-QDSP provides high efficiency message communication for inner-chip RISC core and DSP cores, inner-chip and inter-chip DSP cores. A parallel programming platform is specifically developed for the heterogeneous multi-core architecture of YHFT-QDSP. This parallel programming environment provides a parallel support library and a friendly interface between high level application softwares and multi-core DSP. The 130\,nm CMOS custom chip design results in a high speed and moderate power design. The results of typical benchmarks show that the interconnection structure of YHFT-QDSP is much better than other related structures and achieves better speedup when using the interconnection facilities in combing methods. YHFT-QDSP has been signed off and manufactured presently. The future applications of the multi-core chip could be found in 3G wireless base station, high performance radar, industrial applications, and so on.