Memory Analysis for H.264/AVC Scalable Extension Decoder

In this paper, a systematic analysis for memory usage in H.264/AVC scalable extension (SVC) decoder is presented. This paper analyzes the memory requirements with three different decoding flows, macroblock, row and frame based, to find out a best method which can achieve optimal trade-off between internal memory usage and external memory access. The analysis shows that the SVC decoding needs 88% to 110% extra memory bandwidth compared to single layer H.264 decoding due to inter-layer prediction disregarding of decoding flow. However, extra internal memory storage by inter-layer prediction varies a lot according to the flow. This analysis could provide as a foundation to design a SVC decoder for further step.