Fast system-level design space exploration for low power configurable multimedia systems-on-chip

In this paper, we present a methodology to perform a very fast system-level design space exploration of parameterized multimedia architectures. The methodology is applied to a functional model of a wireless multimedia platform developed by Accent. Our approach guarantees the correctness of the dataflow and finds pareto-optimal solutions by considering area, performances and power consumption. The implementation of an earliest deadline first-like arbitration policy achieves a very efficient scheduling of bus requests, whereas the architecture can be re-configured in terms of run-time in order to optimize power consumption dynamically. The results of applying this design methodology to an industrial project are presented.