The State of Memory Technology Over the past decade there has been rapid growth in the speed of micropro cessors. CPU speeds are approximately doubling every eighteen months, while main memory speed doubles about every ten years. The International Tech nology Roadmap for Semiconductors (ITRS) study suggests that memory will remain on its current growth path. The ITRS short-and long-term targets indicate continued scaling improvements at about the current rate by 2016. This translates to bit densities increasing at two times every two years until the introduction of 8 gigabit dynamic random access memory (DRAM) chips, after which densities will increase four times every five years. A similar growth pattern is forecast for other high-density chip areas and high-performance logic (e.g., microprocessors and application specific inte grated circuits (ASICs)). In the future, molecular devices, 64 gigabit DRAMs and 28 GHz clock signals are targeted. Although densities continue to grow, we still do not see significant advances that will improve memory speed. These trends have created a problem that has been labeled the Memory Wall or Memory Gap.

The 21 chapters in this handbook are written by the leading experts in the world on the theory, techniques, applications, and standards surrounding lossless compression. As with most applied technologies, the standards section is of particular importance to practicing design engineers. In order to create devices and communication systems that can communicate and be compatible with other systems and devices, standards must be followed.*Clearly explains the process of compression and transmission of multimedia signals *Invaluable resource for engineers dealing with image processing, signal processing, multimedia systems, wireless technology and more

This synthesis lecture presents the current state-of-the-art in applying low-latency, lossless hardware compression algorithms to cache, memory, and the memory/cache link. There are many non-trivial challenges that must be addressed to make data compression work well in this context. First, since compressed data must be decompressed before it can be accessed, decompression latency ends up on the critical memory access path. This imposes a significant constraint on the choice of compression algorithms. Second, while conventional memory systems store fixed-size entities like data types, cache blocks, and memory pages, these entities will suddenly vary in size in a memory system that employs compression. Dealing with variable size entities in a memory system using compression has a significant impact on the way caches are organized and how to manage the resources in main memory. We systematically discuss solutions in the open literature to these problems. Chapter 2 provides the foundations of data compression by first introducing the fundamental concept of value locality. We then introduce a taxonomy of compression algorithms and show how previously proposed algorithms fit within that logical framework. Chapter 3 discusses the different ways that cache memory systems can employ compression, focusing on the trade-offs between latency, capacity, and complexity of alternative ways to compact compressed cache blocks. Chapter 4 discusses issues in applying data compression to main memory and Chapter 5 covers techniques for compressing data on the cache-to-memory links. This book should help a skilled memory system designer understand the fundamental challenges in applying compression to the memory hierarchy and introduce him/her to the state-of-the-art techniques in addressing them.

Transactions on HiPEAC is a new journal which aims at the timely dissemination of research contributions in computer architecture and compilation methods for high-performance embedded computer systems. It publishes original research on systems targeted at specific computing tasks as well as systems with broad application bases. Its scope covers all aspects of computer architecture, code generation and compiler optimization methods.

Over the past several years, embedded systems have emerged as an integral though unseen part of many consumer, industrial, and military devices. The explosive growth of these systems has resulted in embedded computing becoming an increasingly important discipline. The need for designers of high-performance, application-specific computing systems has never been greater, and many universities and colleges in the US and worldwide are now developing advanced courses to help prepare their students for careers in embedded computing.High-Performance Embedded Computing: Architectures, Applications, and Methodologies is the first book designed to address the needs of advanced students and industry professionals. Focusing on the unique complexities of embedded system design, the book provides a detailed look at advanced topics in the field, including multiprocessors, VLIW and superscalar architectures, and power consumption. Fundamental challenges in embedded computing are described, together with design methodologies and models of computation. HPEC provides an in-depth and advanced treatment of all the components of embedded systems, with discussions of the current developments in the field and numerous examples of real-world applications. - Covers advanced topics in embedded computing, including multiprocessors, VLIW and superscalar architectures, and power consumption - Provides in-depth coverage of networks, reconfigurable systems, hardware-software co-design, security, and program analysis - Includes examples of many real-world embedded computing applications (cell phones, printers, digital video) and architectures (the Freescale Starcore, TI OMAP multiprocessor, the TI C5000 and C6000 series, and others)

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 19th International Conference on Architecture of Computing Systems, ARCS 2006, held in March 2006. The 32 revised full papers presented together with two invited and keynote papers were carefully reviewed and selected from 174 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on pervasive computing, memory systems, architectures, multiprocessing, energy efficient design, power awareness, network protocols, security, and distributed networks.

As Chairmen of HiPEAC 2005, we have the pleasure of welcoming you to the proceedings of the ?rst international conference promoted by the HiPEAC N- work of Excellence. During the last year, HiPEAC has been building its clusters of researchers in computer architecture and advanced compiler techniques for embedded and high-performance computers. Recently, the Summer School has been the seed for a fruitful collaboration of renowned international faculty and young researchers from 23 countries with fresh new ideas. Now, the conference promises to be among the premier forums for discussion and debate on these research topics. Theprestigeofasymposiumismainlydeterminedbythequalityofitstech- cal program. This ?rst programlived up to our high expectations, thanks to the largenumber of strong submissions. The ProgramCommittee received a total of 84 submissions; only 17 were selected for presentation as full-length papers and another one as an invited paper. Each paper was rigorously reviewed by three ProgramCommittee members and at least one external referee. Many reviewers spent a great amount of e?ort to provide detailed feedback. In many cases, such feedback along with constructive shepherding resulted in dramatic improvement in the quality of accepted papers. The names of the Program Committee m- bers and the referees are listed in the proceedings. The net result of this team e?ort is that the symposium proceedings include outstanding contributions by authors from nine countries in three continents. In addition to paper presentations, this ?rst HiPEAC conference featured two keynotes delivered by prominent researchers from industry and academia.