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High definition television will drive consumer electronics
component manufacturers’ products to new levels
of performance. The ability to process resolutions
and frame rates required by high definition products,
in addition to supporting multiple video codecs such
as H.264 and MPEG4, will require performance levels
unobtainable from fixed configuration programmable
CPUs or DSPs.
Most manufacturers are forced into supporting multiple
codecs directly in hardware, which is extremely time-consuming
in design overhead and hardware verification. Another
penalty is the silicon area consumed by multiple
codecs, especially wasteful since only one codec
is operating at a time. Tensilica’s Xtensa
LX2 processor is well suited towards video applications
due to features that increase data bandwidth while
decreasing bus contention (ports
and queues) and
increase performance per cycle (SIMD, fusions, and
FLIX). Additionally, design time is reduced through
using pre-verified processors in the data pipeline
instead of hand-tuned HDL design.
Xtensa Configuration Highlights
- Multiple Xtensa processors in the video data
path
- Designer-defined video instructions and register
files
- Wide busses and data ports
Xtensa Benefits
Color Space Conversion Accelerator
Color space conversion is required when viewing
images on different electronic devices that use different
color space models. As an example, computer monitors
use RGB, but to display images from a computer on
a TV monitor, the colors need to be converted to
YCbCr. RGB is simply the intensity of components
red, blue, and green, where YCbCr is comprised of
a luminance component and two color difference components.
Conversion is done using a simple matrix transformation.
Tensilica’s Xtensa processors are ideal for
this application due to the designer’s ability
to define large data widths, generate custom operand
registers, and use SIMD techniques. This is a highly
parallel operation since there is no dependence on
adjacent color information. Many pixels can be processed
in a single cycle using Tensilica’s Xtensa
processor as a flexible, programmable color converter.
Xtensa Configuration Highlights
- RGB to YIQ, YCbCr, YPbPr, CMYK
- Programmable throughput
Xtensa Benefits
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