We propose the real-time processing of multimedia data using a special purpose processor. We introduce a VLIW architecture and a hardware stack for our multimedia processor. The VLIW-Hardware Stack Processor (VLIW-HSP) consists of four hardware stack units and one control unit. We discuss real-time multimedia data processing using the VLIW architecture. We show the design of VLIW-HSP and present several performance evaluations using a software simulation of VLIW-HSP. The results of these evaluations indicate that the hardware stack typically achieves a 20% speed improvement. We describe a hardware emulator for VLIW-HSP using an Xilinx FPGA which is necessary for application level performance evaluation
Published in:
Parallel and Distributed Real-Time Systems, 1997. Proceedings of the Joint Workshop on
Date of Conference: 1-3 Apr 1997