Fast co-processor for real time video transmission

Motion Estimation (ME) is the most computationally intensive part of video compression. Speed up this process will open new application for high speed video transmission. Fast Motion Estimation (FME) co-processor architecture that efficiently reuses search area data is proposed. Smart and efficient small Processing Element (PE) and local memory are the central of the architecture. The search area data flows horizontally while the current block data is stationary. A smart local memory and PE design guaranteesa simple and regular dataflow. For a search range of [-16,+15] and block size of 16, our architecture can perform motion estimation for 60 fps of 4CIF video at 290.5 Mhz. This high frequency allows our architecture to be used in high speed video transmission applications.