Design trends in multimedia hardware architectures

Multimedia processing presents challenges from the perspectives of both hardware and software. Each media in a multimedia environment requires different processes, techniques, algorithms and hardware implementations. Each of technologies involved in multimedia processing depends on VLSI implementation for cost efficiency. Although recent advances solved many hardware problems, but the high demands of multimedia processing require special architectural approaches. In this paper, we propose the categorization of main architectural alternatives for multimedia computing based on the programmability of the hardware. In general, there are two approaches for multimedia architecture design as in any other processor design namely: Dedicated and Programmable. Combination of dedicated and programmable modules in a multimedia architecture offers a compromise between the two strategies as an adapted architecture for multimedia purposes. The design trends in each category and the classification of different multimedia architectures are detailed in this paper.