A Decade of Building CODECs with High-Level Synthesis

Over the past decade, we have seen a dramatic increase in the size of common video formats. Addressing this has required an evolution in the performance and complexity of video codecs, all the way from MPEG-2 to H.265. When designing hardware for these CODECs, high-level synthesis (HLS) has been a very common implementation tool of choice, due to the huge productivity gains provided by HLS and the ability of designers to easily experiment with multiple architectural choices (“design space exploration”).

The HLS team here at Cadence® has watched customers build these designs all over the world, and we have the passport stamps to prove it. We have seen multiple approaches to implementing various CODECs, and I wanted to describe some of the experiences we have seen and hopefully provide some useful advice should you be looking to start such a design.

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