Co-processor architecture for MPEG-4 main profile visual compositing
Mladen Bereković, P. Pirsch, Thorsten Selinger, Kai-Immo Wels, C. Miro, Anne Lafage, Christoph Heer, G. Ghigo · 2002
The TANGRAM VLSI co-processor is intended to assist existing MPEG-4 video-decoders to perform the computation intensive final step of MPEG-4 video decoding: compositing of scenes at the display. TANGRAM consists of a RISC control processor and multiple powerful arithmetic units that perform rendering calculations directly in hardware. This hybrid architecture enables adaptation to changes in algorithms or support for different video-formats in software. Communication to a host CPU and video decoding hardware is done via the very common PI-bus on-chip interface. TANGRAM directly interfaces with the ITU-R601/656 digital video output. VHDL implementation and synthesis for a 0.35 /spl mu/ standard-cell library provide an estimate of 100 MHz achievable clock-frequency (worst-case), 52 mm/sup 2/ overall area and 1 Watt power dissipation. TANGRAM has sufficient performance for rendering of MPEG-4 Main Profile@Layer3 scenes (CCIR).