Integration of high-performance ASICs into reconfigurable systems providing additional multimedia functionality

The computational power of many future multimedia applications is beyond the capabilities of today's multimedia systems. Therefore, the integration of additional high-performance multimedia components is most decisive. This paper presents the integration of multimedia components into computer systems using reconfigurable coprocessor boards. The goal of these reconfigurable platforms which can be adapted to several applications and which include digital signal processors, controlling and memory devices as well as dedicated multimedia ASICs is worked out. On the way to such a platform four ASICs for image and text processing are presented. The integration of these components into a computing system using a CardBus-based coprocessor board is shown.