PROPHID: a heterogeneous multi-processor architecture for multimedia

PROPHID is a design method aiming at high-performance systems with a focus on high-throughput signal processing for multimedia applications. The processing and communication bandwidth requirements of such systems are very high. To obtain a good balance between performance, programmability and efficiency in terms of speed, area and power PROPHID uses a novel heterogeneous multi-processor architecture template which exploits task-level concurrency. A general purpose processor aimed at control-oriented tasks and low to medium-performance signal processing tasks, as well as application domain specific processors aimed at high-performance signal processing tasks are available in this template. Next to a central control-oriented bus a special high-throughput communication network is used to meet the high bandwidth requirements of the application domain specific processors. This paper discusses the characteristics and advantages of the PROPHID architecture showing that high performance is obtained by embedding multiple autonomous data-driven processors in a stream-based communication environment.