Reconfigurable media processing

Abstract

Multimedia processing is becoming increasingly important with a range of applications. Existing approaches for processing multimedia data can be broadly classified into two categories, namely: (i) microprocessors with extended media processing capabilities; and (ii) dedicated implementations (ASICs). The complexity, variety of techniques and tools associated with multimedia processing points to the opportunities for reconfigurable computing devices which will be able to adapt the underlying hardware dynamically in response to changes in the input data or processing environment. The paper proposes a novel approach to design a dynamically reconfigurable processor by performing hardware software co-design for a media processing application. As an example, the analysis of the shape coding module of MPEG-4 is chosen to demonstrate the potential for reconfigurability.