Low-power data transfer and storage exploration for H.263 videodecoder system

摘要

We describe a power exploration methodology for data-dominatednapplications using a H.263 video decoding demonstrator application. Thenstarting point for our exploration is a C specification of the videondecoder, available in the public domain from Telenor Research. We haventransformed the data-transfer scheme in the specification, and havenoptimized the distributed memory organization. This results in a memorynarchitecture with significantly reduced power consumption. For the worstncase mode using predicted (P) frames, memory power consumption isnreduced by a factor of 7 when compared to the reference design. For thenworst case mode using predicted and bi-directional (PB) frames, memorynpower consumption is reduced by a factor of 9. To achieve these results,nwe make use of our formalized high-level memory management methodology,npartly supported in our ATOMIUM environment