A novel configurable motion estimation architecture for high-efficiency MPEG-4/H.264 encoding

This paper proposes a flexible, efficient and configurable motion estimation architecture. The core of this architecture is a motion estimation engine NPSPE (nine points search pattern engine), which can support the latest efficient block-based motion estimation algorithms used by MPEG-4/H.264 encoding, such as PMVFAST and EPZS. This architecture has been designed and synthesized in SMIC 0.18um technology. The result shows it consumes only 17.5K gates, but its computing efficiency is about 15 times higher than the well-known low power FS engine including 16 PEs while its PSNR is similar to FS.