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EURASIP Journal on Embedded Systems

EURASIP Journal on Embedded Systems Cover Image
Research Article
Open Access

A Systematic Approach to Design Low-Power Video Codec Cores

  • Kristof Denolf1Email author,
  • Adrian Chirila-Rus4,
  • Paul Schumacher4,
  • Robert Turney4,
  • Kees Vissers4,
  • Diederik Verkest1, 2, 3 and
  • Henk Corporaal5
EURASIP Journal on Embedded Systems20072007:064569

https://doi.org/10.1155/2007/64569

©  Denolf et al. 2007

Received: 2 June 2006

Accepted: 5 March 2007

Published: 8 May 2007

Abstract

The higher resolutions and new functionality of video applications increase their throughput and processing requirements. In contrast, the energy and heat limitations of mobile devices demand low-power video cores. We propose a memory and communication centric design methodology to reach an energy-efficient dedicated implementation. First, memory optimizations are combined with algorithmic tuning. Then, a partitioning exploration introduces parallelism using a cyclo-static dataflow model that also expresses implementation-specific aspects of communication channels. Towards hardware, these channels are implemented as a restricted set of communication primitives. They enable an automated RTL development strategy for rigorous functional verification. The FPGA/ASIC design of an MPEG-4 Simple Profile video codec demonstrates the methodology. The video pipeline exploits the inherent functional parallelism of the codec and contains a tailored memory hierarchy with burst accesses to external memory. 4CIF encoding at 30 fps, consumes 71 mW in a 180 nm, 1.62 V UMC technology.

Keywords

External MemoryMemory HierarchyVideo CodecAlgorithmic TuningMemory Optimization

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Authors’ Affiliations

(1)
D6, IMEC, Leuven, Belgium
(2)
Department of Electrical Engineering, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (KUL), Leuven, Belgium
(3)
Department of Electrical Engineering, Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB), Brussel, Belgium
(4)
Xilinx Inc, San Jose, USA
(5)
Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Technical University Eindhoven, Eindhoven, The Netherlands

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Copyright

© Denolf et al. 2007

This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

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