Partition-based exploration for reconfigurable JPEG designs

This paper proposes a novel approach for design space exploration by characterizing hardware sharing based on the notion of a partition in set theory. Related designs with different degrees of hardware sharing can be captured concisely by a Hasse diagram, highlighting designs with shared building blocks. Hardware sharing can be implemented in various ways, such as component multiplexing, instruction-set processors, or run-time reconfiguration. We illustrate how the proposed approach can be applied to exploring the design space for FPGA implementations of JPEG image compression.