Cost-effective low-power processor-in-memory-based reconfigurable datapath for multimedia applications

Multimedia applications have become a dominant computing workload for computer systems as well as for wireless-based devices. Due to their repetitive computing and memory intensive nature, they can take effective advantage from processor-in-memory (PIM) technology. In this paper, a new low-power PIM-based 32-bit reconfigurable datapath optimized for multimedia applications is presented. The new circuit efficiently performs parallel arithmetic operations on either 8-, 16-, or 32-bit integer data or on 32-bit single precision floating-point data. As a result, high flexibility is provided at a very low hardware cost. When implemented using the UMC 0.18 μm 1.8 V CMOS technology, the proposed datapath exhibits a 285 MHz running frequency, dissipates just 0.12 mW/MHz and occupies a silicon area of only 107,323 μm₂. When performing 2D-DCT, proposed architecture consumes 74% less power and is 28% more power efficient compared to top-of-the-line commercial TI DSP.