This book presents a new set of embedded system design techniques called
multidimensional data flow, which combine the various benefits offered
by existing methodologies such as block-based system design, high-level
simulation, system analysis and polyhedral optimization. It describes a
novel architecture for efficient and flexible high-speed communication
in hardware that can be used both in manual and automatic system design
and that offers various design alternatives, balancing achievable
throughput with required hardware size. This book demonstrates
multidimensional data flow by showing its potential for modeling,
analysis, and synthesis of complex image processing applications. These
applications are presented in terms of their fundamental properties and
resulting design constraints. Coverage includes a discussion of how far
the latter can be met better by multidimensional data flow than
alternative approaches. Based on these results, the book explains the
principles of fine-grained system level analysis and high-speed
communication synthesis. Additionally, an extensive review of related
techniques is given in order to show their relation to multidimensional
data flow.