A Motion Estimation IP with Low Memory Access for H.264/AVC Encoder Based on Fully Parallel Hardware-Oriented Algorithm

In this paper, we present integer and fractional motion estimation IP for H.264/AVC encoder by hardware-oriented algorithm. In integer motion engine, the reference block is used to share for consecutive current macro blocks in parallel processing which exploits data reusability and reduces off-chip bandwidth. In fractional motion engine, instead of two-step sequential refinement, half and quarter pel are processed in parallel manner in order to discard unnecessary candidate positions and double throughput. The synthesis results show that the IP core occupies 907K logic gates and achieves high throughput supporting HDTV 720p 30 fps.