ABSTRACT
In order to meet the real-time requirements of various applications, digital signal processors (DSPs) have traditionally been designed with special hardware features, such as fast multiply and accumulate units, multiple data memory banks and support for low-overhead looping that can efficiently execute DSP algorithms (Lee, 1988, 1989). These applications included modems, disk drives, speech synthesis/analysis, and cellular phones. However, as many forms of media [e.g., film, audio, three-dimensional (3D) graphics, and video] have become digital, new applications are emerging with the processing requirements different from what can be provided by traditional DSPs. Several examples of new applications include digital TV, set-top boxes, desktop video conferencing, multifunction printers, digital cameras, machine vision, and medical imaging. These applications have large computational and data flow requirements and need to be supported in real time. In addition, these applications are quite likely to face an environment with changing standards and requirements; thus the flexibility and upgradability of these new products, most likely via software, will play an increasingly important role.
