Analysis and Characterization of Dynamic Multimedia Applications

Abstract

As discussed in Chap. 1, in nomadic embedded systems an increasing amount of applications (e.g., 3D games, video-players) coming from the general-purpose domain need to be mapped onto a cheap and compact device. However, embedded systems struggle to execute these complex applications because they come from desktop systems, holding very different restrictions regarding memory use features, and more concretely not concerned with the efficient use of the dynamic memory. Today, a desktop computer typically includes at least 2–8 GB of RAM memory, as opposed to the 256–1024 MB range present in low-power respectively high-end nomadic embedded systems. Therefore, one of the main steps during the porting process of multimedia applications (that were initially developed on a PC) onto embedded multimedia systems, involves the optimization of the dynamic memory subsystem.