A Processor for MPEG decoder SOC: A software/hardware co-design approach

Media processing such as real-time compression and decompression of video signal is now expected to be the driving force in the evolution of media processor. in this paper, a hardware and software co-design approach is introduced for a 32-bit media processor: MediaDsp3201 (MD32), which is realized in 0.18 mu m TSMC, 200MHz and can achieve 200 million multiply-accumulate (MAC) operations per second. In our design, we have emerged RISC and DSP into one processor (RISC/DSP). Based on the analysis of inherent characteristics of video processing algorithms, media enhancement instructions are adopted into MD32'instruction set. The media extension instructions are physically realized in the processor core, and improve video processing performance effectively with negligible additional hardware cost (2.7%). Considering the high complexity of the operation for media instructions, technology named scalable super pipeline is used to resolve problem of the time delay of pipeline stage (mainly EX stage). Simulation results show that our method can reduce more than 31% and 23% instructions for IDCT compared to MMX and SSE's implementation [5] and 40% for MC compared to MMX's implementation.