FPGA- and Java-based rapid prototyping of a real-time H.264/AVC decoder

The paper reports on an attempt to implement a real-time hardware H.264 video decoder. The initial results of the project are presented, especially a customized RISC core and some digital modules, both of which have been implemented in Xilinx FPGA. The former has to serve as a host processor that supervises the latter, which speed up the essential decoding subtasks. The system is designed and tested based on a software decoder and diagnostic tool, which are implemented in Java using the object-oriented paradigm. Based on our experiences, we recommend the combination of FPGA and the Java platform as a good basis for rapid prototyping of advanced DSP algorithms.