Impact of architecture extensions for media signal processing on data-path organization

Media signal processing requires high computing power and the algorithms exhibit a great deal of parallelism on low precision data. The basic components of multi-media objects are usually simple integers with 8, 12, or 16 bits of precision. In order to support efficient processing of media signals, instructions set architecture (ISA) of the traditional processors requires modifications. In this paper, we present the quantitative analysis and the computational complexity required to perform media processing. Main classes of instructions that are needed for the required level of performance of the Media Processor are identified. Their efficient implementation and effect on the processor datapath is discussed. The main operations required in media processing are Addition (with or without saturation), Multiplication (with or without rounding), Sum of Products, and Average of two numbers.