Real time SHVC decoder: Implementation and complexity analysis

The Scalable High efficiency Video Coding (SHVC) standard is developed to offer spatial and quality scalability with high coding efficiency. In this paper we investigate a complexity analysis of a real time and parallel SHVC decoder. We first provide details on the implementation of the SHVC decoder including its low level optimizations. Furthermore, we introduce parallelism tools integrated in the SHVC software for parallel decoding. These tools include frame-based parallelism to decode a set of temporal and spatial frames in parallel as well as wavefront parallelism to simultaneously process separated regions of a picture. We assessed through experimental results the complexity of the real time SHVC decoder in different coding configurations. The SHVC decoder with two layers introduces in average an additional complexity of 43 to 80% in respect to a simulcast configuration. The low level optimizations together with a hybrid parallelism solution enables a real time decoding of 1600p40 enhancement layer on an Intel i7 processor.