Fast Prototyping Methodology for Distributed and Heterogeneous Architectures : Application to Mpeg-4 Video Tools

International audienceEmbedded real-time signal, image and control applications have very significant time constraints and thus require the use of several powerful numerical calculation units. Self-time scheduling developed from single-processor applications cannot take advantage of multiprocessor architectures : manual data transfers and synchronizations quickly become very complex, leading wasted time and potential deadlocks. We aim to develop a fast and automatic prototyping process dedicated to parallel architectures especially suited to static executives. The process is based on SynDEx CAD software that improves algorithm implementation on multiprocessor architectures by finding the best match between algorithms and architectures. This paper describes how to use SynDEx, from the high level description of an application and its functional verification to final optimized multiprocessor execution. New SynDEx kernels are depicted for automatic multi-PC and multi-DSP dedicated code generation. Finally, we demonstrate the effectiveness of the approach with a full MPEG-4 codec application shared on PC and multi-DSP platforms