Eclipse: A Heterogeneous Multiprocessor Architecture for Flexible Media Processing

Eclipse defines a heterogeneous multiprocessor architecture template for data-dependent stream processing. Intended as a scalable and flexible subsystem of forthcoming media-processing systems-on-a-chip, Eclipse combines application configuration flexibility with the efficiency of function-specific hardware, or ‘coprocessors’. The multi-tasking coprocessors concurrently execute application tasks of one or more applications. To facilitate reuse, Eclipse separates coprocessor functionality from generic support, implemented by ‘shells’, attached to each coprocessor. The shells offer multi-tasking, inter-task synchronization, and data transport services to the coprocessors. This facilitates the design of coprocessors that require complex control to handle e.g. datadependent I/O and saving/restoring task state. This paper presents the Eclipse architecture template as well as a first instantiation with coprocessors that support simultaneous MPEG-2 encoding and decoding.