HIGH-THROUGHPUT AND MULTIPLIERLESS HARDWARE DESIGN FOR THE AV1 LOCAL WARPED MC INTERPOLATION

Most of the current video codecs support only translational motion models. However, real motion is often complex and cannot be precisely estimated using only translational models. To handle complex motions like panning, zooming, scaling, shearing and rotation, AOMedia AV1 encoder counts with two tools, called Global Warped Motion Compensation (GWMC) and Local Warped Motion Compensation (LWMC). This paper presents two dedicated hardware designs for the AV1 LWMC interpolation filters. The presented hardware can process up to UHD 8K videos at 60fps. The architecture was synthesized for TSMC 40nm standard cells, requiring 454.37K gates with a power dissipation of 189.35mW. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first work in the literature targeting a dedicated hardware design for LWMC AV1 tool.