Bit stream processor for object based MPEG-4 profiles

We present the hardware/software architecture of an application specific processor for real-time bit stream decoding of MPEG-4 object based profiles. Inclusion of complete motion vector and shape decoding enables efficient pipelining between the bit stream processor and the remaining parts of the MPEG decoder. Through special extensions to the MIPS instruction and register set, the performance was increased by about 90% while only augmenting the gate count from 25,000 to 40,000.