Optimized dynamic compilation of dataflow representations for multimedia applications

This paper proposes two optimization methods based on dataflow representations and dynamic compilation that enhance flexibility and performance of multimedia applications. These optimization methods are intended to be used in an adaptive decoding context, or, in other terms, where decoders have the ability to adapt their decoding processes according to a bitstream. This adaptation is made possible by coupling the decoding information to process a stream inside a coded stream. In this paper, we use dataflow representations from the upcoming MPEG Reconfigurable Media Coding (RMC) standard to supply the decoding information to adaptive decoders. The benefits claimed by MPEG RMC are a reuse of coding tools between different specifications of decoder and an execution scalability on different processing units with a single specification, which can target either hardware and/or software platforms. These benefits are not yet achievable in practice as these specifications are not used at the receiver side in MPEG RMC. We valid these benefits and propose two optimizations for the generation and the execution of dataflow models: the first optimization takes benefits of the reuse of coding tools to reduce the time to obtain—configure—enforceable decoders. The second provides an efficient, dynamic, and scalable execution according to the features of the execution platform. We show the practical impact of these two optimizations on two decoder representations compliant with the MPEG-4 part 2 Simple Profile standard and the MPEG-4 Advanced Video Coding standard. The results shows that configuration time can be reduced by 3 and the performance of decoders can be increased by 50 %.