A group of researchers at Toshiba has proposed a novel programmable hardware engine called FlexGrip, which aims at a software implementation of the Context-Adaptive Binary Arithmetic Coder (CABAC), circumventing the need for dedicated hardware. Although state-of-the-art multi-core/many-core processors with SIMD extensions are getting powerful enough for full software implementation of highly data-parallel applications, highly sequential applications like CABAC still require dedicated hardware for accelerating performance.

FlexGrip is a programmable hardware engine consisting of three types of operation units. A branch unit handles control flow instructions such as branch and jump, a load/store unit handles memory access, and an execution unit handles generic ALU instructions. The technology shows promise in power-sensitive handheld applications like smart phones and tablet PCs. FlexGrip consumes about 120mW if operated at 333MHz. FlexGrip counts about 359K gates per core, and with two FlexGrips, CABAC is decoded at about 50Mbps.

The Toshiba scientists presented their findings at the recent Cool Chips 14 conference in Yokohama, Japan. Papers from Cool Chips 14 are available to Computer Society Digital Library subscribers at www.computer.org/csdl.