Custom computing implementation of two-step block matching search algorithm

Many fast search block-matching motion estimation (BMME) algorithms has been developed in order to minimize the search positions and speed up the computation but they do not consider how they can be effectively implemented by hardware. We propose a new regular fast search block-matching motion estimation algorithm named two step search (2SS). The 2SS BMME will then be implemented on the SPACE2 custom computer board which consists of up to 8 Xilinx XC6216 fine-grain, sea-of-gate FPGA chips. The experimental and simulation results show that it can have better algorithmic performance and can be implemented by FPGA chips very cost-effectively for video compression applications. Also, the 30 frames per second real time 2SS BMME video compression can be obtained from the SPACE2 custom computer.