A Novel Data Reuse Method to Reduce Demand on Memory Bandwidth and Power Consumption For True Motion Estimation

Motion estimation (ME) is a kernel algorithm in many video applications. Full search integer ME (FSIME) can find the best result but it usually takes plenty of time. Traditionally, only intra-frame data reuse is considered for FSIME. In this paper, a new inter-frame data reuse method is proposed to further utilize inter-frame data reuse for true ME. ME in frame rate up-conversion (FRUC-ME), a kind of true ME, is used as a case study. For FRUC-ME with the new inter-frame data reuse method, a frame is loaded to the on-chip buffer only once instead of twice and used for two interpolated frames. Two levels of the new method are proposed, Inter-D and new Inter-E, which give a good tradeoff between off-chip memory bandwidth and on-chip buffer size. New data access order is used to implement the new data reuse method. The proposed data reuse method (Inter-D) demands less off-chip memory bandwidth than its intra-frame counterpart (Intra-D), and the off-chip memory traffic and power consumption are both reduced by 37.5% for FRUC-ME.