Francky Catthoor

Hw/sw Implementation Trade-offs of Mpeg-4 Data-flow Algorithm: Design Space Exploration of Heterogeneous Soc Platform for a Data Dominant Algorithm Francky Catthoor

This book presents the mapping of the same multimedia application (MPEG-4) into different platforms used in the embedded domain. The design flow is described in Matlab and translated to C++ language. Afterward, the code is refined and optimised for the execution on multiple platforms: an embedded platform formed by a high performance DSP and an embedded processor, an Application Specific Instruction Processor(ASIP), a specific hardware implemented in an FPGA for accelerating the data-flow part of the system with a soft-core for the control part, and an Application Specific Integrated Circuit(ASIC). One of the main contributions is to show a fair comparison of the same multimedia application implemented in diverse platforms. Another, it is to illustrate a methodology that can be generalised to different Data Dominant applications. New methodology allows to obtain near optimal implementation from concept to silicon and it can be extended to any hybrid HW/SW multimedia platform. We evaluate the different transformations to arrive at an optimal implementation; that allow achieving better results than using more precise effort in mapping the design in the physical level.