A 140-MHz 94 K Gates HD1080p 30-Frames/s Intra-Only Profile H.264 Encoder

This paper presents a HD1080p 30-frames/s H.264 intra encoder operated at 140 MHz with just 94 K gate count and 0.72-mm² core area for digital video recorder or digital still camera applications. To achieve high throughput and low area cost for high-definition video, we apply the modified three-step fast intra prediction technique to reduce the cycle count while keeping the quality as close as full search. Then, in architecture scheduling, we further adopt the variable pixel parallelism instead of constant four-pixel parallelism to speed up performance on the critical intra prediction part while keeping other parts unchanged for low area cost. The achieved design only needs half of the working frequency and reduces the gate count cost by 23.5% compared with the previous design with the same HD720p 30-frames/s requirement. Besides, our design at 140 MHz can support HD1080p 30 frames/s for digital video encoder or 4096 times2304 images with 6.78 frames/s for digital still camera application.