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A Systematic Approach to Design Low-Power Video Codec Cores

EURASIP Journal on Embedded Systems volume 2007, Article number: 064569 (2007) Cite this article

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.

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Author information

Affiliations

  1. D6, IMEC, Kapeldreef 75, Leuven, 3001, Belgium
    • Kristof Denolf
    •  & Diederik Verkest
  2. Department of Electrical Engineering, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (KUL), Leuven, 3001, Belgium
    • Diederik Verkest
  3. Department of Electrical Engineering, Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB), Brussel, 1050, Belgium
    • Diederik Verkest
  4. Xilinx Inc, 2100 Logic Drive, San Jose, CA, 95124-3400, USA
    • Adrian Chirila-Rus
    • , Paul Schumacher
    • , Robert Turney
    •  & Kees Vissers
  5. Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Technical University Eindhoven, Den Dolech 2, Eindhoven, 5612, AZ, The Netherlands
    • Henk Corporaal
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  1. Kristof Denolf
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Correspondence to Kristof Denolf.

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Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 International License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

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Denolf, K., Chirila-Rus, A., Schumacher, P. et al. A Systematic Approach to Design Low-Power Video Codec Cores. J Embedded Systems 2007, 064569 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1155/2007/64569

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Keywords

  • External Memory
  • Memory Hierarchy
  • Video Codec
  • Algorithmic Tuning
  • Memory Optimization