Multimedia Subsystem Architect

Project

Work done for a product or program.

• Define the ISP pipeline stages including demosaic, noise reduction, tone mapping, HDR fusion and lens correction and their bit depths.
• Size video encode and decode throughput for target codecs such as AV1, H.265/HEVC, VVC and their profiles and resolutions.
• Architect the display pipeline covering composition, scaling, colour management, HDR tone mapping and panel interfaces.
• Budget multimedia memory bandwidth per frame and define compression schemes such as UBWC or AFBC to stay within it.
• Define camera sensor interface requirements including MIPI CSI-2 lane counts, virtual channels and multi-camera concurrency.
• Specify end-to-end latency budgets for use cases such as viewfinder preview, video call and XR pass-through.
• Define the multimedia hardware/software partitioning across ISP hardware, DSP firmware, GPU compute and NPU.
• Ensure conformance with codec specifications, HDCP content protection and display standards such as DisplayPort and eDP.
• Support silicon validation of image quality and codec conformance and drive fixes into the next generation.

Function

Work that keeps the discipline running: methods, tools, suppliers and people.

• Work with image quality tuning teams to ensure hardware provides the controls needed to hit IQ benchmark scores.

Project

1. Produce and hand over the role's key deliverables
   • ISP, video and display subsystem architecture specification
   • Multimedia memory bandwidth budget per use case
   • Codec throughput and profile support matrix
   • End-to-end latency budget for key multimedia use cases
   • Camera interface and multi-sensor concurrency specification
   • Image quality hardware control and tuning interface definition
2. Define the architectureGeneral
   • Collect and clarify the product requirements
   • Build performance and power models
   • Write and baseline the architecture specification
3. Support implementationGeneral
   • Answer specification questions from design and verification
   • Assess the impact of proposed changes
   • Compare results with the original targets

Function

1. Build the architecture practiceGeneral
   • Keep modelling tools and reference models current
   • Publish design guidelines and specification templates
2. Plan aheadGeneral
   • Study workload and technology trends
   • Contribute to the product roadmap