Performance, Limitations, and Design Issues of the Integration of a Hardware-Based IME Module With HEVC Video Encoder Software

High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) was designed to improve on its predecessor, the H264/AVC standard, by doubling its compression efficiency. As in previous standards, motion estimation is critical for encoders to achieve significant compression gains. However, the cost of accurately removing tempo...

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Main Authors: Otoniel Lopez-Granado, Hector Migallon, Estefania Alcocer, Roberto Gutierrez, Glenn Van Wallendael, Manuel P. Malumbres
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: IEEE 2025-01-01
Series:IEEE Access
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Online Access:https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/11045920/
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author Otoniel Lopez-Granado
Hector Migallon
Estefania Alcocer
Roberto Gutierrez
Glenn Van Wallendael
Manuel P. Malumbres
author_facet Otoniel Lopez-Granado
Hector Migallon
Estefania Alcocer
Roberto Gutierrez
Glenn Van Wallendael
Manuel P. Malumbres
author_sort Otoniel Lopez-Granado
collection DOAJ
description High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) was designed to improve on its predecessor, the H264/AVC standard, by doubling its compression efficiency. As in previous standards, motion estimation is critical for encoders to achieve significant compression gains. However, the cost of accurately removing temporal redundancy in video is prohibitive, especially when encoding very high resolution video sequences. To reduce the overall video encoding time, we have proposed the implementation of an HEVC motion estimation block in hardware, which can achieve significant speed-ups. However, when the IP hardware is integrated into a software platform, there are several constraints and limitations that reduce its impact on the overall encoding time. In this paper, we analyse these issues in detail to identify the main bottlenecks of the overall software/hardware encoding system. From this analysis, we propose a final integration of the hardware motion estimation module with a hardware unit combined with the slice-based parallel version of the HEVC encoding software. The resulting integrated version is able to achieve the best performance in terms of global speed-up, up to 149.63x compared to the sequential version of the HEVC encoder using the full search motion estimation algorithm.
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issn 2169-3536
language English
publishDate 2025-01-01
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spelling doaj-art-61903f9e83d545e8a0e3203f461af9002025-08-20T03:15:42ZengIEEEIEEE Access2169-35362025-01-011311339011340610.1109/ACCESS.2025.358196111045920Performance, Limitations, and Design Issues of the Integration of a Hardware-Based IME Module With HEVC Video Encoder SoftwareOtoniel Lopez-Granado0https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6968-061XHector Migallon1https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4937-0905Estefania Alcocer2Roberto Gutierrez3https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6391-2168Glenn Van Wallendael4https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9530-3466Manuel P. Malumbres5https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6493-5057Computer Engineering Department, Miguel Hernández University of Elche, Elche, SpainComputer Engineering Department, Miguel Hernández University of Elche, Elche, SpainComputer Engineering Department, Miguel Hernández University of Elche, Elche, SpainCommunication Engineering Department, Miguel Hernández University of Elche, Elche, SpainDepartment of Electronics and Information Systems, Ghent University, Ghent, BelgiumComputer Engineering Department, Miguel Hernández University of Elche, Elche, SpainHigh Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) was designed to improve on its predecessor, the H264/AVC standard, by doubling its compression efficiency. As in previous standards, motion estimation is critical for encoders to achieve significant compression gains. However, the cost of accurately removing temporal redundancy in video is prohibitive, especially when encoding very high resolution video sequences. To reduce the overall video encoding time, we have proposed the implementation of an HEVC motion estimation block in hardware, which can achieve significant speed-ups. However, when the IP hardware is integrated into a software platform, there are several constraints and limitations that reduce its impact on the overall encoding time. In this paper, we analyse these issues in detail to identify the main bottlenecks of the overall software/hardware encoding system. From this analysis, we propose a final integration of the hardware motion estimation module with a hardware unit combined with the slice-based parallel version of the HEVC encoding software. The resulting integrated version is able to achieve the best performance in terms of global speed-up, up to 149.63x compared to the sequential version of the HEVC encoder using the full search motion estimation algorithm.https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/11045920/Video codingHEVCFPGAinteger motion estimationinter predictionSAD architecture
spellingShingle Otoniel Lopez-Granado
Hector Migallon
Estefania Alcocer
Roberto Gutierrez
Glenn Van Wallendael
Manuel P. Malumbres
Performance, Limitations, and Design Issues of the Integration of a Hardware-Based IME Module With HEVC Video Encoder Software
IEEE Access
Video coding
HEVC
FPGA
integer motion estimation
inter prediction
SAD architecture
title Performance, Limitations, and Design Issues of the Integration of a Hardware-Based IME Module With HEVC Video Encoder Software
title_full Performance, Limitations, and Design Issues of the Integration of a Hardware-Based IME Module With HEVC Video Encoder Software
title_fullStr Performance, Limitations, and Design Issues of the Integration of a Hardware-Based IME Module With HEVC Video Encoder Software
title_full_unstemmed Performance, Limitations, and Design Issues of the Integration of a Hardware-Based IME Module With HEVC Video Encoder Software
title_short Performance, Limitations, and Design Issues of the Integration of a Hardware-Based IME Module With HEVC Video Encoder Software
title_sort performance limitations and design issues of the integration of a hardware based ime module with hevc video encoder software
topic Video coding
HEVC
FPGA
integer motion estimation
inter prediction
SAD architecture
url https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/11045920/
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