THE ROLE OF VLSI IN MULTIMEDIA

The opportunity to develop multimedia applications based on compressed video is the result of progress in three areas: standards, networking, and VLSI. Current video coding standards and their underlying algorithms use a variety of techniques to isolate and remove redundancies in the image sequence. Some of these techniques place severe demands on the underlying VLSI technology. Manufacturers of VLSI codecs have chosen a number of different architectural approaches. The advantages and disadvantages of each are discussed in the context of various applications with examples taken from existing or soon to be announced products. The AT&T AVP4000 chip set is described in some detail. Major design challenges included CAD tools for simulation and verification, packaging and the control of power dissipation.