Abstract
Although current SIMD processor architectures can improve the processing performance by exploiting the data level parallelism inherent in video applications, an important performance penalty appears when processing data that is not formatted in an amenable way, e.g. unaligned memory access. This paper presents an enhanced DMA controller that performs block-based data transfers and a realignment when accessing a word in an external memory that is not aligned with the natural data memory/bus width boundary. Moreover, the enhanced DMA controller performs a signal extension while accessing data outside a specific region, e.g. a video frame, decreasing the total amount of processing cycles required for a typical video application. Performance improvements of up to 25% can be achieved when running a highly time consuming video encoding task (motion estimation) on a generic VLIW architecture with the enhanced DMA controller compared to a basic block-transfer DMA controller.
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Payá-Vayá, G., Martín-Langerwerf, J., Moch, S., Pirsch, P. (2009). An Enhanced DMA Controller in SIMD Processors for Video Applications. In: Berekovic, M., Müller-Schloer, C., Hochberger, C., Wong, S. (eds) Architecture of Computing Systems – ARCS 2009. ARCS 2009. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 5455. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-00454-4_17
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-00454-4_17
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