In an effort to help engineers improve system performance and reduce power dissipation, QuickLogic undertook an internal research project studying algorithm acceleration and has developed an in-depth paper describing the research and its results. This paper, ‘Using Hardware Acceleration to Optimize Software-Based Embedded Systems’ is available at no cost at the QuickMIPS portal page.

QuickLogic developed and compared results of two implementations of an industry-standard, video decompression algorithm (MPEG 2) into QuickLogic programmable SoC devices. The first implementation was software only and the second implementation was a hybrid where performance-critical elements of the algorithm were placed in hardware instead of software.

The project revealed that the hybrid implementation provided a ten-fold performance improvement over the software-only implementation. Additionally, the hybrid implementation resulted in eight times more energy efficiency than the software-only version. Performance improvement was primarily affected by two factors: the effect of on-chip data movement between the CPU and the hardware engine versus the speed-up gained from the use of hardware blocks, and the level and willingness to exploit parallelism in the algorithm.

QuickLogic found that the use of hardware to accelerate certain portions of an algorithm pushes the system performance/power metric allowing system designers to put more functionality into a system for a given power constraint and minimize power consumption for a given performance constraint.

Pushing computation from software into hardware is best applied to proprietary, math-intensive algorithms. Consequently, QuickLogic’s focus is centered on vertical applications that require image and/or video processing including homeland security, biometrics, surveillance, MRI/ultrasound and digital signage. QuickLogic believes that the use of a QuickMIPS device as the implementation vehicle provides the fastest time to market for such a solution and has the added benefit of protecting the customer’s IP due to the underlying security benefits used to construct QuickLogic’s programmable logic.

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About QuickLogic

QuickLogic Corporation (NASDAQ: QUIK) is the inventor and pioneer of innovative, customizable semiconductor solutions for mobile and portable electronics OEMs and ODMs. These silicon plus software solutions are called Customer Specific Standard Products (CSSPs). CSSPs enable our customers to bring their products to market more quickly and remain in the market longer, with the low power, cost and size demanded by the mobile and portable electronics market. For more information about QuickLogic and CSSPs, visit www.quicklogic.com.

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