Evaluation of the Performance/Energy Overhead in DSP Video Decoding and its Implications

Video decoding is considered as one of the most compute and energy intensive application in energy constrained mobile devices. Some specific processing units, such as DSPs, are added to those devices in order to optimize the performance and the energy consumption. However, in DSP video decoding, the inter-processor communication overhead may have a considerable impact on the performance and the energy consumption. In this paper, we propose to evaluate this overhead and analyse its impact on the performance and the energy consumption as compared to the GPP decoding. Our work revealed that the GPP can be the best choice in many cases due to the a significant overhead in DSP decoding which may represents 30% of the total decoding energy

Performance and Energy Consumption Characterization and Modeling of Video Decoding on Multi-core Heterogenous SoC and their Applications

To meet the increasing complexity of mobile multimedia applications, the System on Chip (SoC) equipping modern mobile devices integrate powerful heterogeneous processing elements among which General Purpose Processors (GPP), Digital Signal Processors (DSP), hardware accelerator are the most common ones.Due to the ever-growing gap between battery lifetime and hardware/software complexity in addition to application computing power needs, the energy saving issue becomes crucial in the design of such systems. In this context, we propose a study aiming to enhance the understanding of the energy consumption behavior of video decoding on these kinds of systems. Accordingly, an end-to-end methodology for characterizing and modeling the performance and the energy consumption of video decoding on GPP and DSP is proposed. The characterization step is based on an exhaustive experimental methodology for evaluating, at different abstraction levels, the performance and the energy consumption of video decoding. It was achieved on embedded platforms on which were executed a wide range of video decoding configurations. This step highlighted the importance to consider different parameters which may pertain to different abstraction levels in evaluating the overall energy efficiency of a given system. The measurements obtained in this step were used to build empirically performance and energy models for video decoding on both GPP and DSP. The proposed models gave very accurate estimation (R 2 = 97%) of both the performance and the energy consumption of video decoding in terms of a rich set of parameters including the video quality and the processor frequency. Moreover, based on a multi-level characterization and sub-model decomposition approaches, we show how the developed models, unlike classic empirical models, are easily and rapidly generalizable to other platforms.Some possible applications using the developed models, in the context of adaptive video decoding, were proposed. In general, it consists to use the capability of the proposed performance model to predict the decoding time of a given video quality in dimensioning/scheduling the processing resources. Due to the increasing demand on High Definition (HD), the characterization methodology was extended to consider HD video decoding on both parallel multi-cores and hardware video accelerator. This part highlighted the potential of parallelism video decoding to increase the energy efficiency of video decoding and point out some open issues in this domain.Pour répondre à la complexité croissante des applications multimédia mobiles, les systèmes sur puce équipant les appareils mobiles modernes intègrent des unités de calcul puissantes et hétérogène. Parmi ces units de calcul, on peut trouver des processeurs à usage général, des processeur de traitement de signal et des accélérateurs matériels. En raison de l’écart toujours croissant entre la durée de vie des batteries et la demande de plus en plus importante en puissance de calcul, l’économie d’énergie devient un enjeu crucial dans la conception des systèmes mobiles. Cette problématique est accentuée par l’augmentation de la complexité des logiciels et architectures matériels utilisés. Dans ce contexte, nous proposons une étude visant à améliorer la compréhension des considérations énergétiques du décodage vidéo sur ce genre de systèmes. Nous proposerons ainsi une méthodologie pour la caractérisation et la modélisation des performances et de la consommation d’énergie du décodage vidéo, aussi bien sur des processeurs à usage général de type ARM que sur un processeurde traitement de signal. L’étape de caractérisation est basée sur une méthodologie expérimentale pour évaluer de façon exhaustive et à différents niveaux d’abstraction, les performances et la consommation d’énergie du décodage vidéo. Cette caractérisation a été réalisée sur des plates-formes embarquées sur lesquels ont été exécutés un large éventail de configurations du décodage vidéo. Cette étape a souligné l’importance d’examiner différents paramètres qui peuvent se rapporter à différents niveaux d’abstraction dans l’évaluation de l’efficacité énergétique globale d’un système donné. Les mesures obtenues dans cette étape ont été utilisées pour construire empiriquement des modèles de performance et de consommation d’énergie pour le décodage vidéo à la fois sur des processeurs à usage général type ARM et sur un processeur de traitement de signal. Les modèles proposés peuvent estimer avec une grande précision (R 2 = 97%) la performance et la consommation d’énergie de décodage vidéo en fonction d’un nombre de paramètres comprenant la qualité de la vidéo et la fréquence du processeur. En plus, en se basant sur une caractérisation multi-niveaux et une approches de modélisation par décomposition en sous-modèles, nous montrons comment les modèles développés, contrairement aux modèles empiriques classiques, sont facilement et rapidement généralisables à d’autres plates-formes. Nous proposerons également certaines applications possibles des modèles développés, dans le cadre du décodage vidéo adaptatif. En général, cela consiste à exploiter la capacité du modèle de performance proposé pour prédire le temps de décodage d’une qualité vidéo donnée afin de mieux dimensionner les ressources de calculs dans un but de réduire leur consommationd’énergie

DyPS: Dynamic Processor Switching for Energy-Aware Video Decoding on Multi-core SoCs

In addition to General Purpose Processors (GPP), Multicore SoCs equipping modern mobile devices contain specialized Digital Signal Processor designed with the aim to provide better performance and low energy consumption properties. However, the experimental measurements we have achieved revealed that system overhead, in case of DSP video decoding, causes drastic performances drop and energy efficiency as compared to the GPP decoding. This paper describes DyPS, a new approach for energy-aware processor switching (GPP or DSP) according to the video quality . We show the pertinence of our solution in the context of adaptive video decoding and describe an implementation on an embedded Linux operating system with the help of the GStreamer framework. A simple case study showed that DyPS achieves 30% energy saving while sustaining the decoding performanc

Energy-Aware HEVC Software Decoding On Mobile Heterogeneous Multi-Cores Architectures

Video content is becoming increasingly omnipresent on mobile platforms thanks to advances in mobile heterogeneous architectures. These platforms typically include limited rechargeable batteries which do not improve as fast as video content. Most state-of-the-art studies proposed solutions based on parallelism to exploit the GPP heterogeneity and DVFS to scale up/down the GPP frequency based on the video workload. However, some studies assume to have information about the workload before to start decoding. Others do not exploit the asymmetry character of recent mobile architectures. To address these two challenges, we propose a solution based on classification and frequency scaling. First, a model to classify frames based on their type and size is built during design-time. Second, this model is applied for each frame to decide which GPP cores will decode it. Third, the frequency of the chosen GPP cores is dynamically adjusted based on the output buffer size. Experiments on real-world mobile platforms show that the proposed solution can save more than 20% of energy (mJ/Frame) compared to the Ondemand Linux governor with less than 5% of miss-rate. Moreover, it needs less than one second of decoding to enter the stable state and the overhead represents less than 1% of the frame decoding time

On the Energy Efficiency of Parallel Multi-core vs Hardware Accelerated HD Video Decoding

International audienc

GPP vs DSP : A Performance/Energy Characterization and Evaluation of V ideo Decoding

International audienceMobile devices such as smart-phones and tablets are increasingly becoming the most important channel for elivering end-user Internet traffic especially multimedia content. One of the most popular use of these terminals is video streaming. In this type of application, video decoding is considered as the most compute and energy intensive part. Some specific processing units, such as dedicated Digital Signal Processors (DSPs), are added to those devices in order to optimize the performance and energy consumption. In this context, the objective of this paper is to give a comprehensive and comparative study of the performance and energy consumption of video decoding application on embedded heterogeneous platforms containing a GPP and a DSP . T o achieve this goal, a performance and energy characterization methodology for H.264/A VC video decoding is proposed. This methodology considers a large set of video coding parameters and operating clock frequencies to reflect different execution scenarios ranging from low-quality video decoding on low-end mobile phones to high-quality video decoding on tablets. The obtained results revealed that the best performance-energy trade-off highly depends on the required video bit-rate and resolution. For instance, the GPP can be the best choice in many cases due to a significant overhead in DSP decoding which may represent 30% of the total decoding energy in some cases. Some explanations about the obtained performance and overheads are given. Finally, guidelines on which processing element to choose according to video properties are also proposed

Energy Consumption Modeling of H.264/AVC Video Decoding for GPP and DSP

International audienceMobile devices such as smart-phones and tablets are becoming the most important channel for delivering end-user Internet traffic especially multimedia content. One of the most popular multimedia application is video streaming. The video decoding process of this application is compute-intensive and is responsible of the consumption of a considerable part of the energy budget. Those mobile devices contain heterogeneous processing elements among-which we find Digital Signal Processors (DSP) and General Purpose Processors (GPP). In this context, the performance and energy estimation of those complex platforms is a difficult and time consuming task especially when considering both hardware and applicative parameters. In this paper, we propose a methodology for developing a unified high level video decoding performance and energy consumption analytical model for embedded heterogeneous platforms. This methodology is based on experimental measurements conducted on an embedded low-power platform. The developed model describes the performance and the energy consumption of H.264/AVC video decoding on both GPP and DSP in terms of video bit-rate, clock frequency and a set of comprehensive hardware and video related coefficients. It achieves a balance between a too abstract high level model and a detailed lower level one while guaranteeing a very good prediction properties (R-squared = 97%) for the tested videos. As a use case, we show that our model allows to accurately determine the bit-rate values for which video decoding on GPP is more energy-efficient than on DSP for a given platform

HEVC hardware vs software decoding: An objective energy consumption analysis and comparison

International audienceWeb data are experiencing a proliferation of video content for mobile platforms. This is accompanied by new advances in heterogeneous general purpose processor (GPP) cores embedded in mobile devices which offer a great opportunity to enhance both performance and energy efficiency of software (SW) video decoding. On the other hand, hardware (HW) video accelerators are more energy-efficient but are not flexible and their time-to-market is significant. In this context, this paper proposes a characterization methodology to investigate the performance and power consumption of two video decoding approaches on mobile platforms. The first one uses a HW decoder intellectual property (HDIP) in addition to a GPP (for the control). The second one is SW-based and uses only a heterogeneous multi-core GPP. The objective is to study the behavior of both video decoding approaches by comparing them and to understand why and in which case it is worth relying on the GPP rather than the HDIP. We also derive the optimal GPP configuration (number of cores and their frequency) that minimizes the energy consumption for a given video bit-stream on a given platform. The proposed methodology was applied on the HEVC video codec standard. In some state-of-the-art work figures, the SW video decoding consumes up to 1000× more energy than HDIPs. Our results show that, for video resolutions of 1080p and lower and at the operating system perspective point of view, the HEVC SW decoding consumes on average less than 4× more energy (mJ/Frame) than the HW one. Then, the more we scale up the resolution, the more we get the advantage of using the HW video decoding. Furthermore, the HEVC HW and SW decoders consume effectively less than 30% and 50% of the global power consumption of the tested platforms, respectively