A programmable single-chip multiprocessor system for video coding applications has been developed. It integrates four processing elements, on-chip DRAM, and application-specific interfaces. The integrated DRAM is primarily used as frame buffer and makes external memory for most applications obsolete. For fast access to local data segments also static RAM is integrated in each processing element.

The video signal processor AxPe1280V has been developed forimplementation of different video coding applications accordingto standards like ITU-T H.261/H.263, and ISO MPEG-1/2.Itconsists of a RISC processor supplemented by a coprocessor forconvolution-like low-level tasks.RISC and coprocessor have beenimplemented in a standard cell design combined with full-custommodules.The processor was fabricated in a 0.5 µm CMOS technologyand has a die size of 82 mm{2}.It provides a peak performanceof more than 1 giga arithmetic operations per second (GOPS) at66 MHz.For processing of very computation-intensive algorithmsor high data rates, several processors can be bus-connected to forma MIMD multiprocessor system.