(A) low-power context-based adaptive variable length decoder for H.264/AVC baseline profile using totalZeros caches

Abstract

The increased demand for portable mobile systems has made power an important design factor due to their limited battery life. However, since most of early studies have focused on high throughput schemes, low-power schemes have not been received much attention. The portable mobile systems which are targets for H.264/AVC Baseline Profile highly demand low-power operations, and, thus require low-power functional units. This thesis focuses on the design of low-power Context-Based Adaptive Variable Length Decoder (CAVLD). Recently, several low-power methods have been presented. In this thesis, with considering the previous methods, a new method which can reduce the energy consumption of the CAVLD in H.264/AVC Baseline Profile decoder is proposed. The energy consumption of the CAVLD is measured by Synopsys Prime Time PX with a Samsung 0.18μm CMOS library. The simulation results show that the proposed method, TotalZeros Caches, can reduce the energy consumption by 20% averagely compared to that of the CAVLD without TotalZeros Caches. In addition the throughput is increased by 20% as well.