MPEG video decoding with the UltraSPARC visual instruction set

The UltraSPARC microprocessor is equipped with a rich "visual instruction set" (VIS) which can perform ALU and other operations on several pixels in parallel. Significant performance gains are possible in the areas of video compression and decompression, as well as other areas of image processing. In this paper, we present a computational complexity analysis of MPEG video decompression, and derive a quantitative performance bound for software MPEG decoders. Based on this estimate, we show that by combining VIS and a high superscalar instruction rate, UltraSPARC is capable of decoding MPEG digital video at 720/spl times/480/spl times/30 resolution entirely in software. A coding example for the YUV to RGB colorspace conversion is also presented.