A Programmable Video Platform and Its Application Mapping Framework Using the Target Application's SystemC Models

HD video applications can be represented with multiple tasks consisting of tightly coupled multiple threads. Each task requires massive computation, and their communication can be categorized as asynchronous distributed small data and large streaming data transfers. In this paper, we propose a high performance programmable video platform that consists of four processing element (PE) clusters. Each PE cluster runs a task in the video application with RISC cores, a hardware operating system kernel (HOSK), and task-specific accelerators. PE clusters are connected with two separate point-to-point networks: one for asynchronous distributed controls and the other for heavy streaming data transfers among the tasks. Furthermore, we developed an application mapping framework, with which parallel executable codes can be obtained from a manually developed SystemC model of the target application without knowing the detailed architecture of the video platform. To show the effectivity of the platform and its mapping framework, we also present mapping results for an H.264/AVC 720p decoder/encoder and a VC-1 720p decoder with 30 fps, assuming that the platform operates at 200 MHz.