Reconfigurable video decoder with transform acceleration

Reconfigurable video coding (RVC) is an emerging concept allowing efficient usage of hardware resources. With the aid of reconfiguration the same computing resources can be used with different video coding standards and different decoding parameters. In this paper, an application specific processor (ASP) is proposed for the transform block of the RVC. The most intensive functions of several video coding standards are identified and their computations are accelerated with special function units (SFU). The same SFUs are shared among all the targeted video standards. As a result, the proposed ASP is capable of real-time decoding of MPEG-4, H.264, and VC-1 video streams with all the profiles and HD 720p resolution and frame rate. Moreover, the ASP is easily reconfigurable to support other formats with the same kernel functions.