Tool-aided performance analysis and optimization of an H.264 decoder for embedded systems

Current embedded system platforms fulfill the requirements of computational and data intensive multimedia applications. However, the software and hardware architecture must be optimized in order use the available resources efficiently and achieve the required real-time performance. We present the optimization process of an H.264 decoder. We designed an analysis tool which aids us during this process by providing detailed performance and data transfer statistics of the decoder software 1.