Algorithms And Parallel Vlsi Architectures Iii

A comprehensive overview of the current evolution of research in algorithms, architectures and compilation for parallel systems is provided by this publication. The contributions focus specifically on domains where embedded systems are required, either oriented to application-specific or to programmable realisations. These are crucial in domains such as audio, telecom, instrumentation, speech, robotics, medical and automotive processing, image and video processing, TV, multimedia, radar and sonar. The book will be of particular interest to the academic community because of the detailed descriptions of research results presented. In addition, many contributions feature the "real-life" applications that are responsible for driving research and the impact of their specific characteristics on the methodologies is assessed. The publication will also be of considerable value to senior design engineers and CAD managers in the industrial arena, who wish either to anticipate the evolution of commercially available design tools or to utilize the presented concepts in their own R&D programmes.

Since the emergence of VLSI, the relationship between the development of parallel algorithms and the design of special-purpose architecture has always been of major concern. The analysis of this relationship is the main topic of this book. Hardware and software issues closely depend upon one another and cannot be solved independently. Beyond the natural complexity of algorithm design, the designer has to face that of choosing the appropriate technology medium for its efficient realization. The dramatic developments in VLSI technology now offers extraordinary opportunities for implementing complex applications. As application specific/systems can offer 100 to 1000-fold improvements in cost/performance over general purpose computers on applications, they are attracting increasing attention in both academic and industrial communities. Highly specialized application-specific arrays of processors, which are the targeted architectures in this book, are extremely appealing. The papers in this volume give a thorough overview on current research in the areas of parallel algorithms, synthesis methods, VLSI architectures, and design tools.

MPEG-4 is the multimedia standard for combining interactivity, natural and synthetic digital video, audio and computer-graphics. Typical applications are: internet, video conferencing, mobile videophones, multimedia cooperative work, teleteaching and games. With MPEG-4 the next step from block-based video (ISO/IEC MPEG-1, MPEG-2, CCITT H.261, ITU-T H.263) to arbitrarily-shaped visual objects is taken. This significant step demands a new methodology for system analysis and design to meet the considerably higher flexibility of MPEG-4. Motion estimation is a central part of MPEG-1/2/4 and H.261/H.263 video compression standards and has attracted much attention in research and industry, for the following reasons: it is computationally the most demanding algorithm of a video encoder (about 60-80% of the total computation time), it has a high impact on the visual quality of a video encoder, and it is not standardized, thus being open to competition. Algorithms, Complexity Analysis, and VLSI Architectures for MPEG-4 Motion Estimation covers in detail every single step in the design of a MPEG-1/2/4 or H.261/H.263 compliant video encoder: Fast motion estimation algorithms Complexity analysis tools Detailed complexity analysis of a software implementation of MPEG-4 video Complexity and visual quality analysis of fast motion estimation algorithms within MPEG-4 Design space on motion estimation VLSI architectures Detailed VLSI design examples of (1) a high throughput and (2) a low-power MPEG-4 motion estimator. Algorithms, Complexity Analysis and VLSI Architectures for MPEG-4 Motion Estimation is an important introduction to numerous algorithmic, architectural and system design aspects of the multimedia standard MPEG-4. As such, all researchers, students and practitioners working in image processing, video coding or system and VLSI design will find this book of interest.

The main intention of this book is to give an impression of the state-of-the-art in system-level memory management (data transfer and storage) related issues for complex data-dominated real-time signal and data processing applications. The material is based on research at IMEC in this area in the period 1989- 1997. In order to deal with the stringent timing requirements and the data dominated characteristics of this domain, we have adopted a target architecture style and a systematic methodology to make the exploration and optimization of such systems feasible. Our approach is also very heavily application driven which is illustrated by several realistic demonstrators, partly used as red-thread examples in the book. Moreover, the book addresses only the steps above the traditional high-level synthesis (scheduling and allocation) or compilation (traditional or ILP oriented) tasks. The latter are mainly focussed on scalar or scalar stream operations and data where the internal structure of the complex data types is not exploited, in contrast to the approaches discussed here. The proposed methodologies are largely independent of the level of programmability in the data-path and controller so they are valuable for the realisation of both hardware and software systems. Our target domain consists of signal and data processing systems which deal with large amounts of data.