High Profile Video Decoder Chip

The increased resolution of Quad Full High Definition (QFHD) offers significantly enhanced visual experience. However, the corresponding huge data throughput of up to 530 Mpixels/s greatly challenges the design of real-time video decoder VLSI with the extensive requirement on both DRAM bandwidth and computational power. In this work, a lossless frame recompression technique and a partial MB reordering scheme are proposed to save the DRAM access of a QFHD video decoder chip. Besides, pipelining and parallelization techniques such as NAL/slice-parallel entropy decoding are implemented to efficiently enhance its computational power. The chip supporting H.264/AVC high profile is fabricated in 90 nm CMOS and verified. It delivers a maximum throughput of 4096x2160@60fps, which is at least 4.3 times higher than the state-of-the-art. DRAM bandwidth requirement is reduced by typically 51%, which fits the design into a 64-bit LPDDR SDRAM interface and results in 58% DRAM power saving. Meanwhile, the core energy is saved by 54% by pipelining and parallelization.