Hardware Software Architectures For Low Power Embedded Multimedia Systems

This book presents techniques for energy reduction in adaptive embedded multimedia systems, based on dynamically reconfigurable processors. The approach described will enable designers to meet performance/area constraints, while minimizing video quality degradation, under various, run-time scenarios. Emphasis is placed on implementing power/energy reduction at various abstraction levels. To enable this, novel techniques for adaptive energy management at both processor architecture and application architecture levels are presented, such that both hardware and software adapt together, minimizing overall energy consumption under unpredictable, design-/compile-time scenarios.

Hardware Software Co-Design of a Multimedia SOC Platform is one of the first of its kinds to provide a comprehensive overview of the design and implementation of the hardware and software of an SoC platform for multimedia applications. Topics covered in this book range from system level design methodology, multimedia algorithm implementation, a sub-word parallel, single-instruction-multiple data (SIMD) processor design, and its virtual platform implementation, to the development of an SIMD parallel compiler as well as a real-time operating system (RTOS). Hardware Software Co-Design of a Multimedia SOC Platform is written for practitioner engineers and technical managers who want to gain first hand knowledge about the hardware-software design process of an SoC platform. It offers both tutorial-like details to help readers become familiar with a diverse range of subjects, and in-depth analysis for advanced readers to pursue further.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 6th International Workshop on Systems, Architectures, Modeling, and Simulation, SAMOS 2006, held in Samos, Greece on July 2006. The 47 revised full papers presented together with 2 keynote talks were thoroughly reviewed and selected from 130 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on system design and modeling, wireless sensor networks, processor design, dependable computing, architectures and implementations, and embedded sensor systems.

Details a real-world product that applies a cutting-edge multi-core architecture Increasingly demanding modern applications—such as those used in telecommunications networking and real-time processing of audio, video, and multimedia streams—require multiple processors to achieve computational performance at the rate of a few giga-operations per second. This necessity for speed and manageable power consumption makes it likely that the next generation of embedded processing systems will include hundreds of cores, while being increasingly programmable, blending processors and configurable hardware in a power-efficient manner. Multi-Core Embedded Systems presents a variety of perspectives that elucidate the technical challenges associated with such increased integration of homogeneous (processors) and heterogeneous multiple cores. It offers an analysis that industry engineers and professionals will need to understand the physical details of both software and hardware in embedded architectures, as well as their limitations and potential for future growth. Discusses the available programming models spread across different abstraction levels The book begins with an overview of the evolution of multiprocessor architectures for embedded applications and discusses techniques for autonomous power management of system-level parameters. It addresses the use of existing open-source (and free) tools originating from several application domains—such as traffic modeling, graph theory, parallel computing and network simulation. In addition, the authors cover other important topics associated with multi-core embedded systems, such as: Architectures and interconnects Embedded design methodologies Mapping of applications

To the hard-pressed systems designer this book will come as a godsend. It is a hands-on guide to the many ways in which processor-based systems are designed to allow low power devices. Covering a huge range of topics, and co-authored by some of the field’s top practitioners, the book provides a good starting point for engineers in the area, and to research students embarking upon work on embedded systems and architectures.

This book provides its readers with the means to implement energy-efficient video systems, by using different optimization approaches at multiple abstraction levels. The authors evaluate the complete video system with a motive to optimize its different software and hardware components in synergy, increase the throughput-per-watt, and address reliability issues. Subsequently, this book provides algorithmic and architectural enhancements, best practices and deployment models for new video systems, while considering new implementation paradigms of hardware accelerators, parallelism for heterogeneous multi- and many-core systems, and systems with long life-cycles. Particular emphasis is given to the current video encoding industry standard H.264/AVC, and one of the latest video encoders (High Efficiency Video Coding, HEVC).

This chapter will introduce the concepts of multicore related issues, while the subsequent chapters will go into further details. We will start with a general analysis of how electronic design trends lead to multicore hardware-software architectures as the only viable solution addressing consumer requirements on cost, performance and power. We will then categorize multicore architecture concepts by processing and communication requirements and show how different processing techniques combine to form multicore architectures that address the specific needs of different application domains. Special attention will be given to the programmability of the different hardware architectures and the impact that hardware has on software. We will close the chapter with a brief review of existing hardware architectures available on the market, as well as a brief discussion about programming models capable of expressing parallel functionality, which can then be mapped into multiple processor cores.

The power consumption of microprocessors is one of the most important challenges of high-performance chips and portable devices. In chapters drawn from Piguet's recently published Low-Power Electronics Design, Low-Power CMOS Circuits: Technology, Logic Design, and CAD Tools addresses the design of low-power circuitry in deep submicron technologies. It provides a focused reference for specialists involved in designing low-power circuitry, from transistors to logic gates. The book is organized into three broad sections for convenient access. The first examines the history of low-power electronics along with a look at emerging and possible future technologies. It also considers other technologies, such as nanotechnologies and optical chips, that may be useful in designing integrated circuits. The second part explains the techniques used to reduce power consumption at low levels. These include clock gating, leakage reduction, interconnecting and communication on chips, and adiabatic circuits. The final section discusses various CAD tools for designing low-power circuits. This section includes three chapters that demonstrate the tools and low-power design issues at three major companies that produce logic synthesizers. Providing detailed examinations contributed by leading experts, Low-Power CMOS Circuits: Technology, Logic Design, and CAD Tools supplies authoritative information on how to design and model for high performance with low power consumption in modern integrated circuits. It is a must-read for anyone designing modern computers or embedded systems.