GRAPE-II - A SYSTEM-LEVEL PROTOTYPING ENVIRONMENT FOR DSP APPLICATIONS

Grape-II (Graphical Rapid Prototyping Environment) is an advanced system-level development environment for specifying, compiling, debugging, simulating, and emulating digital-signal-processing applications. Its structured prototyping methodology reduces programming effort, and its use of general-purpose reusable hardware minimizes development cost. The general-purpose hardware consists of commercial DSP processors, bond-out versions of core processors, and FPGAs linked to form a powerful, heterogeneous multiprocessor, such as the Paradigm RP developed within the Retides (Real-Time DSP Emulation System) Esprit project and marketed by InCA/Zycad. Grape-II automates the prototyping methodology for these systems by offering tools for resource estimation, partitioning, assignment, routing, scheduling, code generation, and parameter modification. This prototyping approach has been successfully used for an audio processor for the consumer market, for a sender, receiver and channel simulator for digital audio broadcasting, and for a real-time video encoder for mobile applications. The video-encoder case study, described in the article, resulted in a full-speed operational prototype. This and other successes demonstrate the feasibility of the authors' strategy for prototyping real-time color video compression on a commercial DSP multiprocessor.