Efficient realization of a cal video decoder on a mobile terminal (position paper)

Resource utilization is a very central issue in the development of large-volume embedded systems. Increasingly complex execution platforms for embedded multimedia systems challenge the prevailing approach of achieving high utilization by carefully tuned implementations in C and assembly language. The recently started ACTORS project addresses resource utilization by providing appropriate high-level abstractions. Algorithms will be specified in a dataflow programming model. This position paper describes the dataflow compilation subproject within ACTORS, and the plans for a demonstrator in the form of a wireless video player, which will be compiled from a library of dataflow components. We give an account for existing software synthesis techniques and the challenges that anticipate in applying them to complex dataflow models.