PARALLEL COMPUTING ARCHITECTURES FOR VIDEO-CODING AND MULTIMEDIA APPLICATIONS

This paper deals with parallel architectures for video-coding and mult imedia applications. These applications play an important role in cons umer electronics, and their pervasive use strictly depends on the cost /performance ratio that can be achieved with electronic systems. Nowad ays the use of VLSI technology along with parallel computation techniq ues allow one to implement video-coding and multimedia dedicated syste ms with the necessary computing power and the low cost needed for the spread of these applications. The paper first introduces the problem o f video-coding and multimedia applications, presenting also the main s tandards and the problems related to their support. Then different arc hitectural solutions are presented with emphasis with the kind of para llelism they can exploit in the applications. Finally an architecture specifically developed for video-coding is presented. The architecture has been completely developed and fully tested, and it is now used as a testing prototype for checking the development of new application a lgorithms. The architecture has also been a means for verifying and so lving all the practical problems that can be encountered when developi ng a real application based on a parallel architecture. In this sense the paper focuses also on implementation problems that arise in the de velopment of a real architecture. (C) 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.