Reconfigurable Coprocessor for Multimedia Application Domain

A new reconfigurable architectural template is presented. Such a template is composed of coarse-grained and fine-grained reconfigurable datapath and control to obtain performances at custom designed chip level. To show the adaptability/performance of such architectural template, the architecture has been customized (i.e. datapath and control features of the template have been properly sized) for multimedia application domain. To evaluate complexity and maximum clock frequency of the proposed architecture, it has been synthesized using Synopsys Design Compiler on a standard-cell 0.18 μ m technology. Estimated number of transistors is 335 K, while maximum allowable frequency is 460 MHz. Performances have been evaluated comparing the number of clock cycles and the processing time required to process application domain dominant kernels with commercial devices: we obtained up to 95% reduction with respect to ARM and up to 94% reduction with respect to TMS320C5510 in terms of clock cycles. Salvatore M. Carta (1997 Electronic Eng. Master. 2002 Electronics and Computer Science PhD) joined the Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering of the University of Cagliari, Italy in 1998 as PhD student. From 2005 he has been assistant professor in Department of Mathematics and Computer Science of the University of Cagliari. His research interests focus mainly on architectures, software and tools for embedded and portable computing, with particular emphasis on: languages, architectures and compilers for reconfigurable and parallel computing; Networks-on-chip; Operating systems for multiprocessor-systems-on-chip; low power real-time scheduling algorithms. Danilo Pani (2002 Electronic Eng. Master, 2006 Electronics and Computer Science PhD) joined the Department of Electrical and Electronics engineering of the University of Cagliari, Italy in 2002 as Electronics and Computer Science PhD student. His primary research interests are in the area of Digital Signal Processing architectures and systems, Biomedical Engineering, Reconfigurable Systems and Cooperative VLSI architectures for distributed computing. Luigi Raffo (1989 Master, 1994 Electronics and Computer Science PhD) joined Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering of the University of Cagliari, Italy in 1994 as assistant professor. From 1998 he has been professor of Digital System Design, Integrated Systems Architectures and Microelectronics at the same Department. His research activity is mainly in the design of low-power analog and digital architectures/chips. He has been project manager of many local and international projects. He is author of more than 50 international papers in the field.