General purpose, programmable media processor

摘要

A general purpose, programmable media processor (12) for processing and transmitting a media data streams. The media processor (12) incorporates an execution unit (100) that maintains substantially peak data through out of media data streams. The execution unit (100) includes a dynamically partionable multi-precision arithmetic unit (102), programmable switch (104) and programmable extended mathematical element (106). A high bandwidth external interface (124) supplies media data streams at substantially peak rates to a general purpose register file (110) and the execution unit. A memory management unit, and instruction and data cache/buffers (118, 120) are provided. The general purpose, programmable media processor (12) is disposed in a network fabric consisting of fiber optic cable, coaxial cable and twisted pair wires to transmit, process and receive single or unified media data streams.