A 124.8Msps, 15.6mW Field-Programmable Variable-Length Codec for Multimedia Applications

Variable-length coding is one of the key compression methods for multimedia bitstreams. To accommodate new or user-defined variable-length codes (VLC) for maximal compressions in various applications, we propose a variable-length codec that supports field programmability along with very competitive performance indices. The design has 33% less transistors than its field-programmable predecessor. Moreover, measurement on the real chip demonstrates that the design is capable of processing 124.8 mega-symbols (Msym) per second for MPEG4, while consuming only 15.6mW at 1.4V. When measured byµW/Msym, the realized variable-length codec is even 5% better than the state-of-the-art non-programmable MPEG2 variable-length decoder that hardwires the entire design into random logic.