This paper discusses the architecture and performance of parallel digital signal processing with a multicomputer system. A digital signal processor (DSP) system, called NOVI, has been developed to examine various methods for organizing parallel DSP systems, and for developing parallel programs for a wide range of digital signal processing applications. NOVI adopts multicomputer architecture and presently consists of 36 processing elements (PEs). Its parallel program development assistant (PDA) system facilitates powerful debugging functions to monitor all PEs without any interference in the parallel program execution. A load balancing technique for a multicomputer type DSP is also discussed, focusing on low bit rate motion picture coding. Finally, an example of the measured performance of the NOVI system is presented.

This paper describes a super high definition (SHD) image processing system we have developed. The computing engine of this system is a parallel processing system with 128 processing elements called NOVI- HiPIPE. A new pipelined vector processor is introduced as a backend processor of each processing element in order to meet the great computing power required by SHD image processing. This pipelined vector processor can achieve 120 MFLOPS. The 128 pipelined vector processors installed in NOVI- HiPIPE yield a total system peak performance of 15 GFLOPS. The SHD image processing system consists of an SHD image scanner, and SHD image storage node, a full color printer, a film recorder, NOVI- HiPIPE, and a Super Frame Memory. The Super Frame Memory can display a ful color moving image sequence at a rate of 60 fps on a CRT monitor at a resolution of 2048 by 2048 pixels. Workstations, interconnected through an Ethernet, are used to control these units, and SHD image data can be easily transfered among the units. NOVI- HiPIPE has a frame memory which can display SHD still images on a color monitor, therefore, one processed frame can be directly displayed. We are developing SHD image processing algorithms and parallel processing methodologies using this system.

This paper presents a new Hypermedia communication platform supported by the new digital image medium of super high definition (SHD) images. This new image communication platform will encourage the integration of all existing media to realize rich and realistic visual communication over B-ISDN. SHD images have a resolution of more than 20482048 pixels and the frame rate is more than 60 frames/sec. To achieve an real-time compression of SHD moving images, parallel signal processing systems with peak performance of 0.5 Tera Flops will be necessary. The specification requirements, signal processing and communication technologies needed to achieve SHD image communication are discussed. The relationship of hypermedia to SHD images is also examined.