System-level design of embedded media systems

Summary form only given. Reports on system-level design practices in Philips. First we present the design problems encountered in the development of embedded media systems for the consumer market. The characteristics and requirements of the consumer electronics domain are presented. We focus on high performance video applications and the demands that these applications put on architectures of embedded media systems. Several high performance embedded systems architectures are illustrated. This includes an in-depth discussion of high performance programmable components, in which the TriMedia VLIW cores are taken as an example. We further discuss system-on-a-chip (SoC) architectures that incorporate such cores. We address the aspect of heterogeneous SoC architectures that incorporate components in the range from programmable processors to function-specific hardware engines. For such architectures trade-offs can be made with respect to flexibility, performance, and cost to implement an optimal solution. This process involves hardware/software co-design with evaluation of different points in the architecture design space. A key aspect of SoCs is the communication architecture by means of which the different components communicate. We discuss the key issues in the design of such communication architectures. SoC architectures need to include a software stack and related programming paradigm to allow them to be programmed efficiently.