Traffic analysis for on-chip networks design of multimedia applications

The objective of this paper is to introduce self-similarity as a fundamental property exhibited by the bursty traffic between on-chip modules in typical MPEG-2 video applications. Statistical tests performed on relevant traces extracted from common video clips establish unequivocally the existence of self-similarity in video traffic. Using a generic communication architecture, we also discuss the implications of our findings on on-chip buffer space allocation and present quantitative evaluations for typical video streams. We believe that our findings open up new directions of research with deep implications on some fundamental issues in on-chip network design for multimedia applications.