Multimedia extensions for a 550-MHz RISC microprocessor

This paper describes circuits used to implement the motion video instructions (MVI) in the 550-MHz Alpha 21 164PC Microprocessor. The chip is fabricated in a 0.35-/spl mu/m CMOS process and is the first implementation of the MVI instruction set in the Alpha architecture. The MVI instruction set, coupled with the high performance of the 550-MHz processor, delivers 30 frames/s digital video disk (DVD) playback with stereo-quality audio, enables video teleconferencing at 30 frames/s, and significantly improves the performance of MPEG encode algorithms.