Pipelined memory controllers for DSP applications handling unpredictable data acesses

Multimedia applications such as video and image processing are often characterized by a large number of data accesses. In many digital signal-processing applications, the array access patterns are regular and periodic. In these cases, optimized Pipelined Memory Access Controllers can be generated. This technique is used to improve the pipeline access mode to RAM by creating specialized hardware components for generating addresses and packing and unpacking data items. In this paper we focus on the design, implementation and validation of memory interfacing modules that can be automatically generated from a behavioral synthesis tool and which can efficiently handle predictable address patterns as well as unpredictable ones (dynamic address computations) in a pipeline way. We also analyze the benefits of balancing dynamic address computations from datapath to specialized computation units in the memory controller, optimizing bitwise of operators and data locality i.e reducing the power consumption