Combined decoding and flexible transform designs for effective H.264/AVC decoders

In this paper, we propose combined decoding architecture and high-throughput flexible transform design to effectively decode the residual data for H.264/AVC decoders. The inverse quantization (IQ) procedure is combined with context-based adaptive variable length coding (CAVLC) decoder to efficiently achieve the simplification. Besides, the flexible transform architecture is also proposed for effective computation of all transforms needed in H.264/AVC decoders. Since all the transforms are realized in the same architecture, the flexible transform design with the throughput of 8 pixels/sec needs fewer logic gate counts. Simulation results show that the implemented gate count is 18.6k and the maximum operating frequency is 125 MHz. For real-time requirements, this proposed design achieves 4VGA (1280×960)@30 frames/sec in the worst case.