PRODUCT SPECIFICATION i
Foreword
The TriMedia TM-1300 is a higher speed, functionally
enhanced version of the TM-1000 media processor.
TM-1300 contains an ultra-high performance Very Long
Instruction Word processor, as well as a complete intelligent video and audio input/output subsystem. The processor has an instruction set that is optimized for processing audio, video and graphics. It includes powerful
SIMD multimedia operators for eight- and 16-bit signal
datatypes as well as a full complement of 32-bit IEEE
compatible floating point operations.
TM-1300 is intended as a multi-standard programmable
video, audio and graphics processor. It can either be
used standalone, or as an accelerator to a general purpose processor.
The architecture of the TriMedia family came about as
the result of many years of effort of many dedicated individuals. Going back in history, the origin of TriMedia was
laid by the LIFE-1 VLIW processor, designed by Junien
Labrousse and myself in 1987. Work continued afterwards in Philips Research Labs, Palo Alto. My special
thanks go to the entire Palo Alto research team: Mike
Ang, Uzi Bar-Gadda, Peter Donovan, Martin Freeman,
Eino Jacobs, Beomsup Kim, Bob Law, Yen Lee, Vijay
Mehra, Pieter van der Meulen, Ross Morley, Mariette
Parekh, Bill Sommer, Artur Sorkin and Pierre Uszynski.
The Palo Alto period matured the architecture—we ported allvideoandaudioalgorithmsthatwe could find to the
compiler/simulator and refined the operation set. In addition, we learned how to give the architecture a market direction. In May 1994, Philips management—in particular
Cees-Jan Koomen, Eddy Odijk, Theo Claasen and Doug
Dunn—decided to develop TriMedia into a major Philips
Semiconductors product line.
Under the guidance of Keith Flagler, the TriMedia team
was built. All of them contributed to take this from a set
of interesting ideas to a reliable and competitive product
in a short period of time. The initial TriMedia team included Fuad Abu Nofal, Karel Allen, Mike Ang, Robert Aquino, Manju Asthana, Patrick de Bakker, Shiv Balakrishnan, Jai Bannur, Marc Berger, Sunil Bhandari, Rusty
Biesele, Ahmet Bindal, David Blakely, Hans Bouwmeester, Steve Bowden, Robert Bradfield, Nancy
Breede, Shawn Brown, Sujay Chari, Catherine Chen,
Howen Chen,Yan-ming Chen, Yong Cho, Scott Clapper,
Matthew Clayson, Paul Coelho, Richard Dodds, Marc
Duranton, DarciaEding, Aaron Emigh, Li Chi Feng, Keith
Flagler, Jean Gobert, Sergio Golombek, Mike Grimwood, Yudi Halim, Hari Hampapuram, Carl Hartshorn,
Judy Heider, Laura Hrenko, Jim Hsu, Eino Jacobs, Marcel Janssens, Patricia Jones, Hann-Hwan Ju, Jayne Keith, Bhushan Kerur, Ayub Khan, Keith Knowles, Mike
Kong, Ashok Krishnamurti, Yen Lee, Patrick Leong, Bill
Lin, Laura Ling, Chialun Lu, Naeem Maan, Nahid Mansipur, Mike Maynard, Vijay Mehra, Jun Mejia, Derek
Meyer, Prabir Mohanty, Saed Muhssin, Chris Nelson,
Stephen Ness, Keith Ngo, Francis Nguyen, Kathleen
Nguyen, Derek Noonburg, Ciaran O’Donnel, Sang-Ju
Park, Charles Peplinski, Gene Pinkston, Maryam Pirayou, Pardha Potana, Bill Price, Victor Ramamoorthy,
Babu Rao Kandamilla, Ehsan Rashid, Selliah Rathnam,
Margaret Redmond, Donna Richardson, Alan Rodgers,
Tilakray Roychoudhury, Hani Salloum, Chris Salzmann,
Bob Seltzer, Ravi Selvaraj, Jim Shimandle, Deepak
Singh, Bill Sommer, Juul van der Spek, Manoj Srivastava, Renga Sundararajan, Ken-Sue Tan, Ray Ton, Steve
Tran, Cynthia Tripp, Ching-Yih Tseng, Allan Tzeng, Barbara Vendelin, John Vivit, Rudy Wang, Rogier Wester,
Wayne Wonchoba, Anthony Wong, Sara Wu, David Wyland, Ken Xie, Vincent Xie, Bettina Yeung, Robert Yin,
Charles Young, Grace Yun, Elena Zelayeta and Vivian
Zhu.
Expert help and feedback was received from many. In
particular, I’d like to mention Kees van Zon of Philips
Eindhoven for the help with filtering-related issues, and
Craig Clapp of PictureTel for excellent feedback on all
aspects of the architecture.
My special thanks go to Joe Kostelec. He made me understand that my ambitions could better be realized in
California thanin Europe. Furthermore, his vision and his
wisdom are credited with keeping this project alive and
growing until the ‘investment decision.’
The vision of a universal media accelerator is credited to
Jaap de Hoog. Jaap, I wish you were here to see it come
to fruition.
–Gerrit Slavenburg