A decoupled architecture for multi-format decoder

Abstract

We propose a VLSI design of Multi-Format Decoder (MFD) to support multiple video codec standards such as MPEG-2, MPEG-4, H.264 and VC-1. A decoupled MFD architecture is introduced in order to easily add or remove the codecs. The decoupled architecture preserves the stability of the previously designed and verified codecs. It also reduces the gate count by sharing the large-size common resources. The design size is 2.4M gates and the operating clock frequency is 225MHz in the 65nm process.