dSVM: Energy-efficient distributed Scratchpad Video Memory Architecture for the next-generation High Efficiency Video Coding

An energy-efficient distributed Scratchpad Video Memory Architecture (dSVM) for the next-generation parallel High Efficiency Video Coding is presented. Our dSVM combines private and overlapping (shared) Scratchpad Memories (SPMs) to support data reuse within and across different cores concurrently executing multiple parallel HEVC threads. We developed a statistical method to size and design the organization of the SPMs along with a supporting memory reading policy for energy efficiency. The key is to leverage the HEVC and video content knowledge. Furthermore, we integrate an adaptive power management policy for SPMs to manage the power states of different memory parts at run time depending upon the varying video content properties. Our experimental results illustrate that our dSVM architecture reduces the overall memory energy consumption by up to 51%–61% compared to parallelized state-of-the-art solutions [11]. The dSVM external memory energy savings increase with an increasing number of parallel HEVC threads and size of search window. Moreover, our SPM power management reacts to the current video properties and achieves up to 54% on-chip leakage energy savings.