Imagination Technologies Debuts PowerVR MVED1 Multi-Standard Video Encode/Decode Accelerator

Imagination Technologies’ PowerVR division – a market leader in embedded graphics, video and display technologies – announces the availability of its PowerVR MVED1 multi-standard video encode/decode accelerator IP. The PowerVR MVED1 IP core enables advanced video graphics performance with low power consumption in a range of applications such as mobile and handheld multimedia and mobile TV (including DVB-H).

MVED1 builds on the advanced decode features of the PowerVR MVDA2 core with powerful encode acceleration including programmability for standards future-proofing. The architecture allows either the encode or decode functions to be used, or both simultaneously (for example in videophones). An internal buffer minimises accesses to external memory by the encode functions, to reduce power and memory system overhead.

The reduction in CPU load achieved with MVED1 can reach over 90%, depending on the video-coding standard in use, thereby allowing the system designer to target lower cost and lower power systems. This is of increased importance when performing quarter-pel motion compensation as used in modern video compression standards.

MVED1 accelerates the encode and/or decode of H.264, MPEG-4, H.263, MPEG-2, WMV8 and WMV9 video streams, offloading a range of CPU-intensive functions such as transform and quantisation and their inverses, motion estimation and compensation, intra prediction and deblocking filtering from the host software. The hardware acceleration features also support JPEG still image processing, and M-JPEG.

Says David McBrien, VP business development, Imagination Technologies: “With its multi-standard encode and decode and support of bit rates up to 10 Mbit per second and programmable resolutions up to 720 x 576, MVED1 enables unsurpassed picture quality. Add to that advanced power management features for very low power consumption, and reductions in CPU load typically over 80%, and MVED1 is the ideal choice for mobile multimedia and TV devices.”

MVED1’s in-loop deblocking is performed either by directly accessing the macroblocks from the decoder hardware or by fetching them from system memory which allows it to be used for general video post-processing.

MVED1 in detail
MVED1 is available with a video encode/decode acceleration driver, which supports the acceleration of common video codecs through a single easy to use interface. The driver is available for Linux and WinCE platforms.

The MVED1 core is configurable at synthesis time for 32 or 64-bit system bus widths. Power requirements are optimized by sophisticated power management techniques using register-level and module-level clock gating to ensure the lowest active and standby power. A full rate H.264 Baseline profile stream encode can be achieved with the core running at less than 50MHz (CIF resolution: 352x288 pixels, 30 frames per second). SD resolution is also supported with a 150MHz clock frequency. A full rate H.264 Baseline profile stream decode can be achieved with the core running at less than 50MHz (CIF resolution: 352x288 pixels, 30 frames per second). SD resolution is also supported with a 100MHz clock frequency.

PowerVR MVED1 is available as soft IP and ships with: synthesis scripts; an extensive verification test suite to ensure correct implementation of the design in a SoC; a hardware implementation guide; and a comprehensive programmer's reference manual.
For a full MVED1 specification, visit www.powervr.com.