VideoCore

VideoCore is a low-power mobile multimedia processor architecture originally developed by Alphamosaic Ltd and now owned by Broadcom. Its two-dimensional DSP architecture makes it flexible and efficient enough to decode as well as encode a number of multimedia codecs in software, while maintaining low power usage. The semiconductor intellectual property core (SIP core) has been found so far only on Broadcom SoCs.

Technical details

Multimedia system constraints

Mobile multimedia devices require a lot of high-speed video processing but at low power for long battery life. The ARM processor core has a high IPS per watt figure, and thus dominates the mobile phone market, but requires video acceleration coprocessors and display controllers for a complete system. The amount of data passing between these chips at high speed results in higher power consumption. A single processing unit has to be clocked very fast for video processing, and power is proportional to clock speed, so a single-processor solution will be power hungry.