Cell Broadband Engine Architecture

Real-time H.264/AVC Encoder for Cell

VSofts Real-time H.264 Encoder for Cell is an H.264 Encoder SDK for the Sony/Toshiba/IBM (STI) Cell Broadband Engine (BE) microprocessor architecture.

The main challenge of Cell programming is to parallelize tasks among the eight Synergistic Processing Elements (SPEs). The traditional straight-forward approach of encoder parallelization is to divide the picture into multiple slices, and process each slice on its own core. However, each additional slice degrades picture quality. Furthermore, this approach requires that each SPE execute the full encoder software stack, exceeding the memory limitations of the SPE.

Rather than parallelizing through the use of slices, VSofts’ encoder uses multiple pipelines or stages of frame processing in order to reduce code size. The first stage is Pre-Analysis and Reduced-Resolution Search, which performs motion search down to 4x-pel accuracy on several reference frames. The second stage is the core encoding + deblocking of the reconstructed picture (needed only for the reference pictures). Finally the third stage is entropy encoding.

Features

• Based on VSofts proprietary ThruCode™ technology, offering a highly modular design.
• Fourth-generation VSofts H.264 codec implementation, offering broadcast-quality video compression.

MPEG-2 Decoder for Cell/PlayStation 3

VSofts MPEG-2 Decoder for Cell/Playstation 3 is an MPEG-1/MPEG-2 video decoder for the Main Profile at Main level. Exhibits excellent performance on the PS/3.