PR Newswire
Oct 14, 2003 11:00 ET

EEMBC's New Digital Entertainment Benchmarks Offer Designers Powerful Tool for Measuring Processor Performance in MP3, Video, and Cryptography Tasks

SAN JOSE, Calif., Oct. 14 /PRNewswire/ -- New Digital Entertainment benchmarks announced today by the Embedded Microprocessor Benchmark Consortium (EEMBC) at Microprocessor Forum will give designers of set-top boxes, PDAs, mobile phones, and in-car entertainment systems a sophisticated new set of tools for evaluating the performance of embedded processors in their systems.

Selected to be representative of real-world applications and to provide balanced coverage of mobile and stationary platforms, kernels for the new EEMBC(R) Digital Entertainment benchmarks include MP3 decode, MPEG-4 video encode and decode, MPEG-2 video encode and decode, and a variety of cryptography algorithms.

Compared with previous EEMBC benchmark kernels that measure processor performance in consumer applications, the new Digital Entertainment benchmarks make more intensive use of processor computational ability, caches, and system memory and thereby provide a detailed analysis of processor strengths and weaknesses.

"These new benchmarks provide much more extensive application-level coverage compared with the original consumer benchmark suite, with its high- pass grayscale filter, JPEG codec, and RGB conversion kernels," said Markus Levy, EEMBC president. "This is an exciting step for EEMBC, as these benchmarks will greatly raise the bar on performance requirements for processors and compilers."

A major challenge for the new Digital Entertainment benchmarks was to ensure they would verify that execution of variable-bit tasks were executed correctly by the processor. A team led by Sergei Larin (Motorola), chairman of EEMBC's Consumer Subcommittee, and the EEMBC Certification Labs (ECL) solved this problem by using a checksum calculated from the original "golden" file, which is subdivided into 256 samples that are equally distributed through the output. Allowing round-off within the samples, this method requires minimal code while serving as a pragmatic check on processor accuracy.

"The challenge in developing the new Digital Entertainment benchmarks lay in the complexity and size of the code," said ECL Chairman and CEO Alan R. Weiss. "By comparison, many of the original EEMBC consumer benchmarks are relatively simple, though making industry-standard benchmark code portable to hundreds of platforms is no small challenge. The new Digital Entertainment benchmarks really do a great job of measuring performance."

Benchmark Details

MP3 Decode - Addresses implementations of MP3 decode in hardware with a focus on reprogrammable solutions for mobile phones, PDAs, and similar devices.

MPEG-4 Video Codec - Focused on the mobile market, new benchmarks include separate encode and decode kernels.

MPEG-2 Video Codec - Focused on higher-end products such as set-top boxes, with separate encode and decode kernels.

Cryptography - Requiring very data-intensive processing, addresses rapidly rising demand for random number generation to facilitate financial transactions across the Internet.

Benchmark score reports on processors tested against EEMBC's new Digital Entertainment benchmarks will be available for free from the consortium's Web site at www.eembc.org.

About EEMBC

EEMBC, the Embedded Microprocessor Benchmark Consortium, develops and certifies real-world benchmarks and benchmark scores to help designers select the right embedded processors for their systems. Every processor submitted for EEMBC(R) benchmarking is tested for parameters representing different workloads and capabilities in communications, networking, consumer, office automation, automotive/industrial, embedded Java, and microcontroller-related applications. With members including leading semiconductor, intellectual property, and compiler companies, EEMBC establishes benchmark standards and provides certified benchmarking results through the EEMBC Certification Labs (ECL) in Texas and California.

EEMBC members include 3DSP, Altera, AMD, Analog Devices, ARC International, ARM, Digital Communication Technologies, esmertec, Fujitsu Microelectronics, Green Hills Software, IAR, IBM Corporation, Imagination Technologies, Improv Systems, Infineon Technologies, Intel, Intrinsity, LSI Logic, Matsushita Electric Industrial, Mentor Graphics, Metaware, Metrowerks, MIPS Technologies Inc., Motorola, National Semiconductor, NEC Electronics America, Oki Semiconductor, ParthusCeva, Philips Semiconductors, PMC-Sierra, Precise, Red Hat, Renesas Technology, Samsung, Sandbridge Technologies, Sony Computer Entertainment, STMicroelectronics, StarCore, Sun Microsystems, SuperH, Symbian, Tao Group, Tensilica, Texas Instruments, Toshiba, VIA Technologies, Wind River Systems, and Xilinx.

EEMBC is a registered trademark of the Embedded Microprocessor Benchmark Consortium. All other trademarks appearing herein are the property of their respective owners.

Website: http://www.eembc.org/