<title>Media processor programming interface to increase the portability of media processor software</title>

Abstract

The architecture of mediaprocessors has become increasingly sophisticated to accommodate the need for more performance in processing various media data. However, due to the inability of mediaprocessor compilers to fully detect the parallelism available in a program and maximize the utilization of the mediaprocessor's on-chip resources, C intrinsics, which are hints to the compiler on which assembly instructions to use, have been employed to achieve better performance. Nonetheless, these intrinsics are mediaprocessor-dependent, thus limiting the portability of mediaprocessor software. To help increase the portability of mediaprocessor software, we have developed a Mediaprocessor Programming Interface (MPI), which translates one set of C intrinsics into another. In many cases, the translated code for the target mediaprocessor has similar performance to the code developed with native intrinsics. We believe that the MPI can facilitate the reuse of mediaprocessor software as well as the development of mediaprocessor-independent software.