Guest Editorial: Special Issue on Design and Programming of Signal Processors for Multimedia Communication

This special issue addresses some of the technical challenges in the design and programming of signal processors for multimedia communication. The past decade has witnessed astonishing growth in Internet usage, penetration of mobile phone service, and proliferation of communication-ready portable devices. All these are whetting the appetite of the populace for more convenient and ubiquitous access to multimedia information, at a higher quality than previously available. The development of terminal equipment to meet such demand presents a significant technical challenge, considering that it is highly desirable that the equipment be cost effective, power efficient, versatile, and extensible for future upgrades. Over time, signal processors have become an indispensable part in such equipment. For example, a recent study shows that 90% of the SoC products in 130 nm technology have at least one programmable processor. Nonetheless, there are challenges in the design and programming of signal processors for multimedia communication, in particular, (1) generalpurpose signal processor design, (2) application-specific signal processor design, (3) operating systems and programming support, and (4) application programming. To address the concerns, six papers are included in this special issue. This issue opens with two general-purpose signal processor designs. To meet the diverse computing requirements while achieving high computational and energy efficiencies, the system architectures presented here provide desired features via two different approaches: (1) novel micro-architecture in the DSP cores and (2) reconfiguring computational circuits.