Automatic dsp cache memory management and fast prototyping for multiprocessor image applications

Image and video processing applications represent a great challenge in terms of real-time embedded systems. Programmable multicomponent architectures can provide suitable target solutions combining flexibility and computation power. On-chip memory size limitation forces the use of external memory. Its relatively small bandwidth induces performance loss which can be limited by the use of an efficient data access scheme. Cache mechanism offers a good tradeoff between efficiency and programming complexity. However in a multicomponent context data consistency has to be ensured. The aim of our work is to develop a fast and automatic prototyping methodology dedicated to deterministic signal processing applications and their multicomponent implementations. This methodology directly generates distributed executives for various platforms from a high level application description. This paper presents the improvement provided by cache memory in the design process. Cache is automatically managed in multicomponent implementations, thus reducing development time. The improvement is illustrated by image processing applications.