Application-specific memory performance of a heterogeneous reconfigurable architecture

Heterogeneous reconfigurable processing architectures are often limited by the speed at which they can access data in external memory. Such architectures are designed for flexibility to support a broad range of target applications, including advanced algorithms with significant processing and data requirements. Clearly, strong performance of applications in this category is an extremely relevant metric for demonstrating the full performance potential of heterogeneous computing platforms. One such example, a film grain noise reduction application for high-definition video, which is composed of multiple image processing tasks, requires enormous data rates due to its large input image size and real-time processing constraints. This application is especially representative of highly parallel, heterogeneous, data-intensive programs that can properly exploit the advantages offered by computing platforms with multiple heterogeneous reconfigurable processing elements. To accomplish this task and meet the above requirements, a bandwidth-optimized external memory controller has been designed for use with a heterogeneous reconfigurable architecture and its NoC interconnect. With the help of the application described above, this paper evaluates the proposed architecture in two forms: (1) with a basic memory controller IP and (2) with the advanced memory controller design. The results illustrate the full potential of the computing platform as well as the power of heterogeneous reconfigurable computing combined with high-speed access to large external memories.