Testing and optimizing a scale reduction algorithm for a multi-screen video wall application on the META-100 ASIC emulator

BARCO is one of the world lending companies in video projection systems. With the introduction of its Graph-X Wall product and the aim to resort to numerical solutions in order to improve picture quality as well as product reliability, sophisticated algorithms are required to provide the user with a flexible multi-screen windowing system. This paper introduces a complex algorithm for a real time scale reduction application. Due to the side effects of numerical computation, to the great amount of computations to be made and to the very wide dispersion of video pictures and scale reduction parameters the only efficient way to validate this algorithm is to display a picture that has been reduced by the algorithm embedded in the ASIC. So it turned out that the best way to achieve such a picture is ASIC emulation. This paper explains the design methodology and the hardware used for this emulation application, developed from a totally new concept in ASIC emulation introduced by the company META-Systems.