Parallel full HD video decoding for multicore architecture

Abstract

Nowadays, the multi-core architecture is adopted everywhere in the design of contemporary processors in order to boost up the performance of multitasking applications. This paper mainly exploits the multi-core capability for full HD video decoding speedup to meet realtime display. Hantro 6100 H. 264 decoder is chosen as the reference decoder. The serial decoding algorithm in the Hantro 6100 H.264 decoder is replaced with a parallel decoding algorithm. In this research work, macroblock level parallelism is implemented using the enhanced version of macroblock region partitioning (MBRP) is implemented for the parallel video decoding of H. 264 video. The results show that the workloads are well-balanced among the processor cores. It is observed that the maximum speedup values are attained when the decoder is running with 4 threads on a 4 core system and 8 logical core system configuration. Moreover, it is also observed that there is no degradation of visual quality throughout the decoding process. © Springer Science+Business Media Singapore 2014.