High Profile Intra Prediction Architecture for UHD H.264 Decoder

Abstract

This paper presents a new architecture for high profile intra prediction in H.264/AVC video coding standard. Our goal is to design an Intra prediction engine for 4Kx2K@60fps Ultra High Definition (UHD) Decoder. The proposed architecture can provide very stable throughput, which can predict any H.264 intra prediction mode within 66 cycles. Compared with previous design, this feature can guarantee the whole decoding pipeline to work efficiently. The intra prediction engine is divided into two parallel pipelines, one is used for 4x4 block prediction loops and the other is used to prepare data for MB loops. It can overlap data preparing time with prediction time, which can finish data loading and storing within 2 cycles. Comparing with MB pipeline only architecture, it can achieve more than 3.2 times higher throughput with 29.8 K gates cost. The proposed architecture is verified to work at 175 MHz for our UHD Decoder by using TSMC 90 G.

Decoder Hardware Architecture for HEVC

“…However, the larger TU sizes increase the hardware complexity due to larger pipeline and reference buffers. In H.264/AVC, one macroblock can contain only one kind of intra block size, which can be used to design optimized pipeline schedules as in [23,24]. Since a CTU in HEVC can have a variety of TUs and a mix of intra and inter CUs, such pipeline schedules will be too complex to optimize for every possible combination.…”