A Novel Approach for Multimedia Rendering Platforms

We introduce a novel approach to implement multimedia rendering platforms, using reconfigurable-oriented hardware/software co-design. Disadvantages of current platforms include a very short obsolescence cycle, communication and computational performance limitations, large sizes of software components, and architectures not prepared to cope with future multimedia requirements. To overcome these, we propose a reconfigurable computing architecture to implement multimedia rendering platforms, flexible enough to support several new audio and video applications, such as decoding and mixing of multiple streams/objects, and spatial rendering. In this paper we present the Reconfigurable Digital Set-Top Box project, some original accomplishments in multimedia services design, partial results on the development of applications, and the implementation of a reconfigurable RISC microprocessor for future multimedia processing and rendering platforms. This approach permits to synthesize complete and integrated hardware/software systems on-the-fly/ondemand directly into the platform.