Abstract: A system and method are disclosed for parallel compression and decompression of a bitstream. For compression, the bitstream is separated into a plurality of components, and the components are encoded using a compression algorithm. Packets are then constructed from the encoded components. At least one packet is associated with each encoded component and comprises header information and encoded data. The packets are combined into a packetized encoded bitstream. For decompression, the packets are separated from the packetized encoded bitstream using the header information. The packets are then decoded in parallel using a decompression algorithm to recover the encoded data. The plurality of components are reconstructed from the recovered encoded data and combined to-recover the bitstream.

Abstract: A microprocessor with embedded cache memory is disclosed. In a "test mode" of operation, caches are accessed directly from the memory interface signals. Direct writing and reading to/from the instruction and data caches allows the testing of the functionality of the cache memory arrays. External memory interface is granted to an external master via a bus arbitration mechanism so that the test mode operation can be utilized.