Software Code Generation for the RVC-CAL Language

The MPEG Reconfigurable Video Coding (RVC) framework is a new standard under development by MPEG that aims at providing a unified high-level specification of current and future MPEG video coding technologies using dataflow models. In this framework, a decoder is built as a configuration of video coding modules taken from the standard MPEG toolbox library or proprietary libraries. The elements of the library are specified by a textual description that expresses the I/O behavior of each module and by a reference software written using a subset of the CAL Actor Language named RVC-CAL. A decoder configuration is written in an XML dialect by connecting a set of CAL modules. Code generators are fundamental supports that enable the direct transformation of a high level specification to efficient hardware and software implementations. This paper presents a synthesis tool that from a CAL dataflow program generates C code and an associated SystemC model. The generated code is validated against the original CAL description simulated using the Open Dataflow environment. Experimental results of the translation of two descriptions of an MPEG-4 Simple Profile decoder with different granularities are shown and discussed.