Michael S. Grow

SPR imaging-based salivary diagnostics system for the detection of small molecule analytes

Abstract:  Saliva is an underused fluid with considerable promise for biomedical testing. Its potential is particularly great for monitoring small‐molecule analytes since these are often present in saliva at concentrations that correlate well with their free levels in blood. We describe the development of a prototype diagnostic device for the rapid detection of the antiepileptic drug (AED) phenytoin in saliva. The multicomponent system includes a hand‐portable surface plasmon resonance (SPR) imaging instrument and a disposable microfluidic assay card.

Evaluation of the Pentium 4 for imaging applications

In the past few years, programmable mediaprocessors (e.g., Hitachi/Equator Technologies MAP-CA and Texas Instruments TMS320C6x) have been replacing ASICs and other hardwired components in imaging applications (e.g., medical imaging modalities, machine vision systems, and video conferencing). Due to the high performance requirements of many imaging applications, older general-purpose processors were not suitable for these kinds of applications. For instance, in 1993 the TMS320C80 was about 50 times faster than the Intel 486 processor. However, recent advances in the architecture and instruction sets of general-purpose processors have closed the gap significantly in performance between these processors and programmable mediaprocessors. For example, the MMX, SSE, and SSE2 extensions to the Pentium 4 instruction set give the Pentium 4 a legitimate multimedia instruction set that is comparable to the instruction sets found in mediaprocessors, thus further blurring the boundary between general-purpose processors and mediaprocessors. The combination of the instruction set extensions and a new architecture that supports very high clock frequencies give the Pentium 4 performance in imaging functions comparable to high performance mediaprocessors and thereby make the Pentium 4 a candidate for applications where its large size, high cost, and high power consumption are not overriding issues.

Consortium for promoting the use of media processors in multimedia applications

Mediaprocessors, such as Philips Trimedia and Hitachi/Equator Technologies MAP, combine the computational power of high-end DSPs with various I/O capabilities in a single programmable chip. due to their programmability, mediaprocessors have greater flexibility than ASICs and other special-purpose hardware. Early mediaprocessors, such as Texas Instruments TMS320C80 since its introduction in 1994, have had limited success due to their difficulty in programming, insufficient computational power, and high cost. Fortunately, several newer mediaprocessors, which are available or under development, are easier to program, are less expensive, and/or have more computational power. However, due to the earlier difficulties and inherent uncertainties in the programmable solutions, mediaprocessor user companies (set makers) are often hesitant in adopting the mediaprocessors in their products. Furthermore, set makers still need to expend a lot of time and manpower in making a successful transition from hardwired to mediaprocessor-based products. Therefore, we introduce the Mediaprocessor (MP) Consortium, which aims to remove the barrier to the widespread use of programmable mediaprocessors. Through publications, web site, training courses, software libraries, and objective evaluations of mediaprocessors, the MP Consortium can increase the awareness of the benefits of mediaprocessors over ASICs, make the transition to mediaprocessor-based products easier for set makers, and help them attain full advantage of using mediaprocessors.

Template-based automatic data flow code generation for mediaprocessors

Abstract Modern mediaprocessors, with their flexibility and fast time-to-market, have become an alternative to ASICs as solutions for the high computing needs in digital imaging and video applications. A key element in obtaining high performance from mediaprocessors is an efficient data transfer mechanism to move the data between on-chip and off-chip memories. A direct memory access (DMA) controller can reduce the data movement overhead by operating independently from the main computing engine. However, to use the DMA to its full extent requires extensive experience and/or significant programming/debugging efforts. In this paper, we present a template-based automatic DMA code creation tool, which can reduce the DMA programming effort substantially. We developed the data flow code generator (DFCG) for two mediaprocessors, i.e. Hitachi/Equator Technologies MAP and Texas Instruments TMS320C64x. We have used the DFCG in 84 imaging functions and obtained almost identical performance to those functions whose DMA code had been manually developed, while substantially reducing DMA programming efforts.

Media processor programming interface to increase the portability of media processor software

The architecture of mediaprocessors has become increasingly sophisticated to accommodate the need for more performance in processing various media data. However, due to the inability of mediaprocessor compilers to fully detect the parallelism available in a program and maximize the utilization of the mediaprocessors on-chip resources, C intrinsics, which are hints to the compiler on which assembly instructions to use, have been employed to achieve better performance. Nonetheless, these intrinsics are mediaprocessor-dependent, thus limiting the portability of mediaprocessor software. To help increase the portability of mediaprocessor software, we have developed a Mediaprocessor Programming Interface (MPI), which translates one set of C intrinsics into another. In many cases, the translated code for the target mediaprocessor has similar performance to the code developed with native intrinsics. We believe that the MPI can facilitate the reuse of mediaprocessor software as well as the development of mediaprocessor-independent software.