Implementation strategies for CABAC decoder of H.264 for HD resolution video

This paper investigated previous designs of CABAC decoders, and used criteria of cost and performance to evaluate them. There were several strategies used to raise the throughput: parallel processing, pipeline, prediction. The result of the investigation tells that a parallel structure in which those most frequently SEs are decoded in two-bin/cycle mode achieved the highest performance although a relatively high cost. To find a way to increase the performance further, this paper did experiments on JM to analyze the distribution of SEs and average length of SEs. Based on the analysis, this paper draws a conclusion that using specific strategies to decode more than two bins per cycle for those high frequency SEs can gain a higher throughput to support realtime HD applications.