Comparison and Analysis of Novel Architectures for Media Compression

Image and video compression is a typical data-intensive and computation-intensive application. As general processors are inefficient and power consumptive in processing such tasks, more and more novel architectures appeared. This paper first gave an overview about the media compression standards, and then introduced several novel architecture processors, such as VIRAM, DTVA, Imagine, Cell, RAW and TRIPS. Some of these processors used PIM technology, and some are based on stream processing, the others are multicore and polymorph architecture. Finally compared and analyzed the design parameters of these processors, such as the performance and power consumptions. According to the media compression features which have constraints on architectural design, we concluded some useful suggestions for media compression processor architecture designers, that include execution model, memory hierarchies, performance and dissipation, etc.