Exploring Trade Offs in Buffer Requirements and Throughput Constraints for Synchronous Dataflow Graphs

Multimedia applications usually have throughput constraints. An implementation must meet these constraints, while it minimizes resource usage and energy consumption. The compute intensive kernels of these applications are often specified as Synchronous Dataflow Graphs. Communication between nodes in these graphs requires storage space which influences throughput. We present an exact method to determine the minimal storage space needed to execute a graph under a given throughput constraint. We also show how this method can be used to chart the Pareto space of throughput and storage trade-offs. The feasibility of the approach is demonstrated with a number of examples.