An architecture of full-search block matching for minimum memory bandwidth requirement

In this paper an architecture of full-search block matching motion estimation suitable for high quality video is proposed. Minimum memory bandwidth is an important requirement in motion estimation architecture especially when dealing with high quality video such as large frame size video. Memory bandwidth will increase to an unrealistically high value without careful consideration, which no cost efficient solution can afford. This architecture is designed for overcoming the frame memory bandwidth bottleneck by exploiting the maximum data reuse property. This is done by setting up local memory for storing frame data. The size of local memory is also optimized to near minimum value, only a little overhead is introduced. Due to the reduction of memory bandwidth, the costs of the frame memory modules, I/O pin count and the power consumption can be reduced but 100% hardware efficiency is still achieved. Simple and regular interconnections are featured to ensure high speed operation by an efficient and distributed local memory organization.