The first step towards the design of video processors and video systems is to achieve an accurate understanding of the major video applications, including not only the fundamentals of the many video compression standards, but also the workload characteristics of those applications. Introduced in 1997, the MediaBench benchmark suite provided the first set of full application-level benchmarks for studying video processing characteristics, and has consequently enabled significant research in

more »

... er architecture and compiler research for multimedia systems. To expedite the next generation of systems research, the MediaBench Consortium is developing the MediaBench II benchmark suite, incorporating benchmarks from the latest multimedia technologies, and providing both a single composite benchmark suite as well as separate benchmark suites for each area of multimedia. In the area of video, MediaBench II Video includes both the popular mainstream video compression standards, such as Motion-JPEG, H.263, and MPEG-2, and the more recent next-generation standards, including MPEG-4, Motion-JPEG2000, and H.264. This paper introduces MediaBench II Video and provides a comprehensive workload evaluation of its major processing characteristics. ; phone 1 314 935-4963; fax 1 314 935-7302; www.ccrc.wustl.edu/~jefritts/ MEDIABENCH: THEN AND NOW Achieving an understanding of the workload characteristics of an application area, as well as studying new computer architectures and compiler optimizations for that application area, requires a benchmark suite representative of that applpication area. Founded in 1997 by Lee, Potkonjak, and Mangione-Smith, MediaBench 1,4 has served as the dominant system-level benchmark suite for multimedia applications over the last seven years. Lee et al. designed the MediaBench benchmark suite with a focus on full applications representative of the workload of emerging multimedia and communications systems (at that time). It incorporated applications written in C, ranging from image and video processing, to audio and speech compression, and even encryption and computer graphics, and proved an invaluable research tool for computer architecture and compiler design for video systems. Of course, like SPEC 5 and other benchmark suites, MediaBench has aged over the last seven years and is no longer as representative of the emerging workloads for multimedia and communications, but is more representative of the current and past workloads. So, in order to maintain and improve upon the mission originally set forth for MediaBench, the MediaBench Consortium was founded to provide for, in a manner similar to the SPEC organization, the continuing development and refinement of the MediaBench benchmark suite 6 . In designing the next generation of MediaBench, one of the goals was to expand the utility of the benchmark suite into distinct application areas. While the original MediaBench included applications from the areas of video, image, audio, speech, computer graphics, and security, many of these applications areas were represented by a single application. And in some cases, that application may not have been as representative of its area as desired. Consequently, the next generation of MediaBench will include both not only a composite benchmark suite, MB comp , which includes the most advanced applications from all video areas, but also separate benchmark suites for each of the distinct media types (e.g. audio, video, speech, computer graphics, etc.). These area-specific media benchmarks suites will include the corresponding media benchmark(s) from the composite benchmark, but will complement the suite with additional representative applications from that area. In particular, the composite benchmark suite will serve as the flagship in defining the set of emerging multimedia and communications workloads, while the benchmark for each specific media type will include the emerging applications as well as the current popular applications from that area. While the definition of the full suite of composite and media-specific benchmark suites is still in the early stages, definition of the next generation of MediaBench has been completed for the audio and video benchmarks. For video applications, the MB video subgroup of MediaBench includes both the popular mainstream video compression standards, such as Motion-JPEG, H.263, and MPEG-2, and the more recent next-generation standards, including MPEG-4, Motion-JPEG2000, and H.264, as shown in Table 1 . This suite of application-level video benchmarks, will help take researchers and system designers into the next generation of video systems research and design. H.263 A video coder (h263enc) and decoder (h263dec) based on the ITU H.263 standard targeting video compression for transmission over ISDN networks. Source code produced by Telenor R&D. H.264 A video coder (h264enc) and decoder (h264dec) based on the forthcoming joint ISO/ITU H.264 standard (also known as MPEG-4 part 10) for very low bitrate video coding. Source code is the test model produced by the H.264 working group. Motion-JPEG A video coder (jpegenc) and decoder (jpegdec) based on the ISO JPEG standard for image compression. Source code produced by the Independent JPEG Group. Motion-JPEG2000 A video coder (jp2Kenc) and decoder (jp2Kdec) based on the recent ISO JPEG-2000 standard for wavelet-based image compression. Source code is the JasPer library for JPEG-2000. MPEG-2 A video coder (mpeg2enc) and decoder (mpeg2dec) based on the ISO MPEG-2 standard for highquality video coding. Source code produced by the MPEG Software Simulations Group (MSSG). MPEG-4 A video coder (mpeg4enc) and decoder (mpeg4dec) based on the recent ISO MPEG-4 standard for object-based and very-low bitrate video coding. Source code is the ffmpeg library for audio/video coding. Table 1: Description of the MB video benchmark suite.