High-performance motion estimation operator using multimedia oriented subword parallelism
Résumé
In the multimedia domain, the performance of different computationally intensive applications can be enhanced by executing them on operating units which are suitable for low precision pixel data. Subword parallelism (SWP) is one of the techniques which can be used to design arithmetic operators for the parallel processing of pixel data. However in conventional SWP operators, the lack of coordination between subwords and pixel sizes results in the under utilization of the hardware resources. In this paper, a SWP motion estimation (ME) operator is proposed for multimedia applications. The computational units in this operator are designed based upon multimedia oriented subword sizes rather than classical subword sizes. Due to the better coordination between pixels and subword sizes, the SWP ME operator utilizes the available resources more efficiently which ultimately increases the overall performance of the processor for multimedia applications. The proposed SWP ME operator unit can be used as a co-processor for real-time multimedia applications.