Dave Murray and Chris Kelly
CEVA

The latest generation of Multimedia platforms, specifically for mobile entertainment devices, offers unprecedented processing power. The integration of a CPU engine, running the Operating System and control functions, with a powerful DSP engine running multiple multimedia tasks, has grown to be extremely common. However, developing the system software to utilize the full potential of modern DSP + CPU platforms can be a complex and time consuming challenge for the system integrator.

This paper discusses the challenges faced by the system integrator in developing DSP system solutions to meet the demands of modern applications. Software integration issues are introduced, including DSP-CPU communications protocols and API standardisation. A possible software framework environment, addressing those issues, is also described and specifically applied to multimedia-related applications.