Flexible, Open and Efficient Embedded Multimedia Systems

Abstract

In this chapter, a Hw/Sw framework for SoC based embedded multimedia systems is described. In addition to the benefits inherited from the use of the FPGA technology, our solution is also based on the use of OpenMAX standard [1]. This allows building multimedia embedded systems in a reasonable time and, at the same time, being such systems fully reusable and portable.OpenMAX is an open standard promoted by the Khronos Group 1 which pursuits to reduce the cost and complexity of porting multimedia software to new processors and architectures. Since the OpenMAX standard provides an only software reference implementation, it has been necessary to revisit and redesign all the architectural concepts and protocols of OpenMAX for the heterogeneous embedded systems ecosystem; this means that the proposed framework is intended for hybrid (Hw/Sw) multimedia systems development. Therefore, a flexible and transparent mechanism to manage Hw/Sw interfacing is necessary. Moreover, to cope with the demanded temporal and computational requirements, it is mandatory to keep the overload introduced by the integration infrastructure to a minimum.The framework described in this work borrows the facilities provided by the Object Oriented Communication Engine (OOCE) [5]. OOCE is an heterogeneous middleware for SoCs. It provides basic and advanced in-chip communication services to transparently handle communication between the software and the hardware parts of an embedded system. In order to meet the performance levels demanded by multimedia systems, in this work we have extended OOCE with new features and some optimizations. The framework also follows a design approach based on MDA (Model Driver Architecture, [6]), in order to ease the design workflow (as it is stated in the "MDA manifest" [7]). The main purpose of the framework is then raising the level of abstraction when defining the multimedia system, in order to facilitate the automatization of the design, analysis and verification through the use of executables models.