KUMP/D: the Kyushu University multi-media processor

Abstract

High speed image and video processing is a key technology in multi-media applications, and, therefore, currently many hardware accelerators to speed up such processing are developed and used. However, for the next generation advanced multi-media applications in the next generation, such as high quality virtual reality, bidirectional visual interface, etc., the hardware accelerators can not deal with tasks involved in these applications. This is because these tasks consist of complex and irregular computation structures, and, therefore, it is not easy to implement simple hardware accelerators for these tasks. Considering the above situation, for the next generation multi-media applications, we have been developing a MIMD based multi-media processor, KUMP/D(Kyushu University Multi-media Processor on Datarol-II). KUMP/D is a exible parallel processor, based on ne grain parallel processing, which is which indispensable in complex and irregular computation, and is also equipped with a specialized I/O network. This I/O network has enough throughput for real time video I/O, providing a mechanism, which supports the synchronization of process executions and real time video frames.

Co-processor system design for fine-grain message handling in KUMP/D

“…This interconnection network is specialized for fine-grain message communication, which includes parameter passing and result value returning. This network has a deadlock-free structure based on its hierarchical packet buffers [4] [12].…”

“…Since the interconnection network is not suitable for long I/O packet transmissions, KUMP/D has a specialized I/O network, which consists of serial links connecting the PEs in a ring structure, for communication of long packets such as video I/O packets and disk I/O packets [8]. One important feature of the I/O network is that it supports a mechanism of the synchronization of each video frame and process execution [12]. The FMD (Fine-grain Message Driven mechanism) is a revised version of the Datarol-II execution mechanism.…”