Patent ID: 6847365

Claim:
A user configurable universal media processing system arranged to receive and process any of a number of type of digital data, comprising: a memory unit for storing the digital data including video digital data and audio digital data being processed by said media processing system; a number of distributed configurable media processing elements (MPE) suitably arranged to provide distributed processing of said digital data each being coupled to the memory unit thereby enabling selected portions of the digital data to be shared and processed amongst the media processing elements, wherein at least one of said configurable MPEs is dynamically configured to act, at least in part, as a control processing element suitably arranged to control the distribution of said digital data between some or all of the MPEs, schedule tasks for the MPEs, wherein each of the distributed MPEs process a selected portion of the digital data in concert with the other MPEs thereby increasing the overall speed and efficiency of the media processing system, and provide a control signal to selected ones of the MPEs wherein said control signal causes the selected MPEs to reconfigure in order to process a selected digital data type; and a number of communication busses suitably arranged to interconnect the memory unit, the number of media processing elements and the control processing element, whereby control signals/commands and data are transferred throughout the media processing system on separate ones of the communications busses thereby increasing the overall processing power of the media processing system.