Pattern recognition tool to detect reconfigurable patterns in MPEG4 video processing

Current approaches towards building a reconfigurable processor are targeted towards general purpose computing or a limited range of media specific applications and are not specifically tuned for mobile multimedia applications. The increasing demand for mobile multimedia processing with stringent constraints for low power, low chip area and high flexibility at both the encoder and decoder naturally demand the design and development of a dynamically reconfigurable multimedia processor. We have performed a detailed complexity analysis of the MPEG-4 video coding mode which has illustrated the potential for reconfigurable computing. We have recently proposed a methodology for designing a reconfigurable media processor. This involves the design of a parser that identifies data/control flow graphs generated from the input assembly code of an UltraSPARC V-9 architecture; recurring pattern analyzer that uses a clustering based approach to identify specific sequences of operations that can potentially be implemented in hardware; and finally a count of such modules at every level of granularity with the associated weights based on the complexity of computation and data transfers used by partitioner and router. In this paper we then propose the design of the parser and pattern recognizer with results for detecting the reconfigurable patterns in MPEG4.