H.264/AVC UHD decoder implementation on multi-cluster platform using hybrid parallelization method

We propose a new hybrid parallelization method for H.264/AVC decoder for UHD (3840×2160) resolution on the proposed multi-clusters platform. We used 4 clusters to decode UHD video application, which cluster is composed of functional partitioned computing elements (1 DSP core and 3 hardware accelerators). The parallelizing efficiency is improved drastically by adopting frame-level parallelization between clusters. Due to the scalable architecture, we can control the number of cluster according to computing requirement. For example, we can use one cluster for FHD video application and four clusters for UHD application. The experimental results show that the parallelism is close to theoretical value by a 1.4~7.6% margin at 2~4 clusters and H.264/AVC UHD decoder runs under 650MHz.