(A) real-time multimedia data processing system : design, implementation, and analysis

Abstract

With recent advances in hardware and software of digital processing, it is now feasible to integrate the multimedia data streams within a single platform, which is fundamental driving force behind the apparent convergence of computing, telecommunications, broadcast, and entertainment technologies. The integration of the multiple media with different characteristics into a single computer system provides additional possibility for a spectrum of new applications, many of which are in place today. A multimedia data processing system should be designed as a programmable and reconfigurable multiprocessor architecture which can be cope with versatile applications in general image processing, image coding, image analysis, and other multimedia applications. This thesis proposes a multimedia data processing system, called the KAIST image computing system (KICS), and describes it``s design, implementation, and analysis. The KICS is designed in consideration of the requirements for a multimedia system, such as programmability, high-speed data access capability, reconfigurability, partitionability, and flexible resource allocation and communication. Multiple hierarchical parallelisms and flexible communications exist in processing element (PE) clusters and inside PEs in the KICS. Key features in the architecture are the topology using message-passing model with hierarchically segmented buses, powerful PEs with programmable features, high-speed memory access with enhanced memory performance, and a flexible structure which allows the use of either parallelism or pipelining within a PE or between the PE``s inside a cluster. The proposed memory system using status-arbiter is modeled with the M/G/1 queuing system with extended service time and its throughput approximates full bandwidth in case of large data-block access. The programmability and the high-speed data-access capability of the KICS are its most important features as a high-performance system for real-time multimedi...