High-performance and low-power memory-interface architecture for video processing applications

Abstract

To improve memory bandwidth and power consumption in video applications, a new memory-interface architecture is proposed. The architecture adopts an array address-translation technique to utilize the fact that video-processing algorithms have regular memory-access patterns. Since the translation can minimize the number of overhead cycles needed for row-activations in synchronous DRAM (SDRAM), we can improve memory bandwidth and energy consumption significantly. The features of SDRAM and memory-access patterns of video-processing applications are considered to find a suitable address translation. Compared to the conventional linear translation, experimental results show that the proposed architecture reduces about 89% of row-activations and increases the memory bandwidth by 50%. In addition, the proposed architecture reduces the energy consumption by 30% on the average.