An 88/44 Adaptive Hadamard Transform Based FME VLSI Architecture for 4 K2 K H.264/AVC Encoder

Yibo FAN, Jialiang LIU, Dexue ZHANG, Xiaoyang ZENG, Xinhua CHEN

Summary :

Fidelity Range Extension (FRExt) (i.e. High Profile) was added to the H.264/AVC recommendation in the second version. One of the features included in FRExt is the Adaptive Block-size Transform (ABT). In order to conform to the FRExt, a Fractional Motion Estimation (FME) architecture is proposed to support the 88/44 adaptive Hadamard Transform (88/44 AHT). The 88/44 AHT circuit contributes to higher throughput and encoding performance. In order to increase the utilization of SATD (Sum of Absolute Transformed Difference) Generator (SG) in unit time, the proposed architecture employs two 8-pel interpolators (IP) to time-share one SG. These two IPs can work in turn to provide the available data continuously to the SG, which increases the data throughput and significantly reduces the cycles that are needed to process one Macroblock. Furthermore, this architecture also exploits the linear feature of Hadamard Transform to generate the quarter-pel SATD. This method could help to shorten the long datapath in the second-step of two-iteration FME algorithm. Finally, experimental results show that this architecture could be used in the applications requiring different performances by adjusting the supported modes and operation frequency. It can support the real-time encoding of the seven-mode 4 K2 K@24 fps or six-mode 4 K2 K@30 fps video sequences.

• Publication: IEICE TRANSACTIONS on Electronics Vol.E95-C No.4 pp.447-455
• Publication Date: 2012/04/01
• Online ISSN: 1745-1353
• DOI: 10.1587/transele.E95.C.447
• Type of Manuscript: Special Section PAPER (Special Section on Solid-State Circuit Design – Architecture, Circuit, Device and Design Methodology)

Authors

Yibo FAN
Jialiang LIU
Dexue ZHANG
Xiaoyang ZENG
Xinhua CHEN

Keyword

fractional motion estimation,  adaptive block-size hadamard transform,  H.264/MPEG4 AVC,  4 K2 K,  quad full high definition