Implementation and optimization of multimedia framework on heterogeneous multi-core platform

Abstract

The multimedia framework is designed to provide easy to use services for developing multimedia applications based on an embedded platform. With the rapid advances in multimedia technology, various types of codec have been developed. Most of them achieve good performance but construct with complicated algorithms. Moreover, the current computing load of embedded system is still carried by MPU, and its burden of huge computing load leads multimedia framework to fail in real-time performance. Therefore, this paper analyzes the characteristics and demands of the multimedia frameworks. It proposes a refined interface to integrate the powerful digital signal processor for acceleration and modifies the frameworks architecture to maximize its efficiency. In our experiments, we apply Android multimedia framework as our test benchmark, and export our DSP H.264/AVC decoder into the embedded multimedia. The experimental results indicate that when the resolution becomes large, the effectiveness of the proposed architecture is about 1≃2.5 fps improved than the original frameworks. When the resolution becomes smaller, the performance increases significantly, say about 6≃7 fps improvement. Moreover, the playback could achieve the real-time performance even if the CPU which we used is less powerful than OMAP platform.