How multimedia workloads will change processor design

Abstract

Workloads drive architecture design and will change in the next two decades. For high-performance, general-purpose processors, there is a consensus that multimedia will continue to grow in importance. The authors predict these processors will incorporate more media processing capabilities, eventually bringing about the demise of specialized media processors, except perhaps, in embedded applications. These enhanced general-purpose processor capabilities will arise from multimedia applications that require real-time response, continuous-media data types, and significant fine-grained data parallelism.