Perspectives of multimedia SoC

Summary form only given, as follows. Multimedia technology is one of the driving forces for the digital convergence of computers, communications, and consumer electronics. With digital technology being applied to human daily life, multimedia has been brought to office, home, and even the outdoors, from large devices to portable devices, and from specific people to everybody. Diverse multimedia applications have been realized and are emerging around various multimedia terminals, making human life more convenient and more interesting. One of the key factors allowing multimedia systems to become so popular is the advance in SoC technology, which enables the integration of large-scale complex system into a single chip and results in the low-cost and low-power features desired by multimedia terminals. The recent advances in signal processing and video codec implementations for multimedia applications are presented. The technology issues and directions of the multimedia design approaches based on the latest research results, e.g. MPEG-4, H.264, are introduced. Key challenges of multimedia SoC design, e.g. complexity, low power, flexibility, are addressed. Finally, the future trend of multimedia SoC are discussed.