Development of a 4K Main 10 Profile HEVC Encoder for Great Improvements in Compression Efficiency Oliver.Gunasekara, CEO & Co-founder NGCodec Inc.

1. Development of a 4K Main 10 Profile HEVC Encoder
for Great Improvements in Compression Efficiency
Oliver.Gunasekara@NGCodec.com
CEO & Co-founder
© 2014 NGCodec Inc. All rights reserved. Proprietary and confidential.

2. Founded in 2012
Product: Silicon IP - H.264/5 (VP8/9) CODEC IP
Team has been working 6 years in the standard, Championed 10-bit
4th generation HW (RTL) video encoder since 2006
Uniquely focussed on both FPGA ‘soft’ and ASIC/SoC ‘hard’ IP
© 2014 NGCodec Inc. All rights reserved. Proprietary and confidential.

3. NGCodec go to market strategy
Telepresence
Broadcast encoders Surveillance
© 2014 NGCodec Inc. All rights reserved. Proprietary and confidential.
!
H.265/H.264
encoder IP
(4kp60 10-bit
1 frame latency)
FPGA IP
SoC IP
Mobile TV/STB
Camera
NG
Server offload
Automotive

4. © 2014 NGCodec Inc. All rights reserved. Proprietary and confidential.
Why UHD?
480i 1080p 2160p
HDTV
(Rec 709)
UHDTV
(Rec 2020)

5. History of Video Codecs
AVC/H.264
HEVC/H.265
© 2014 NGCodec Inc. All rights reserved. Proprietary and confidential.
MBytes
1200
800
400
0
576i24
File size, same quality
MPEG-2/H.262
53 DVD’s
1994 2003 2013 Uncompressed
60
40
20
Number of DVD’s
0

6. Implementation challenges
Inter-picture prediction (ME) complexity
Intra-picture prediction complexity
Mode decision (RDO)
Look-ahead mechanism, pre-processing and two-pass
Efficient Interlace support
© 2014 NGCodec Inc. All rights reserved. Proprietary and confidential.
18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 3 3 34
17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2
0 : Intra_Planar
1 : Intra_DC

7. Software encoding video will be too expensive
Quality level increasing
1400
1200
1000
800
600
400
200
0
H.264/AVC (Today) H.265/HEVC (2015+)
HD UHD (4K)
© 2014 NGCodec Inc. All rights reserved. Proprietary and confidential.
1,344
21 210
Intel i7 power (W) to encode in realtime
480i 1080p 2160p
64x

8. Solution: Use an FPGA accelerator tech
i7 Power (Watts)
FPGA Power (Watts)
© 2014 NGCodec Inc. All rights reserved. Proprietary and confidential.
Power (W)
1,400
1,050
700
350
0
UHD (4K)
20
1,344
67x
Field Programmable Gate Array
(FPGA) server card
Field programmed with application which changes the hardware
Performance is up to 1000X software but its harder to program
New faster/bigger FPGA chips every year from Xilinx/Altera/Microsemi

9. Region Of Interest based Encoding
Apical Assertive Vision detects the most important parts of the scene
NGCodec Harrier encoder uses this data to encode the video, prioritizing bits
Both designs run at 4K 2160p60 in real time in a small amount of silicon
Reduced file size
Higher perceptual quality
© 2014 NGCodec Inc. All rights reserved. Proprietary and confidential.

10. Region Of Interest based Encoding
QP26 - 5.3Mbps QP36 (QP26 face) - 1.5Mbps
© 2014 NGCodec Inc. All rights reserved. Proprietary and confidential.

11. ‘Harrier’ H.265/HEVC Encoder Product Description
H.265 compression efficiency
100%
90%
80%
70%
60%
50%
HM (Theoretical)
Control register interface
HEVC
1080p60
encoder
elements
© 2014 NGCodec Inc. All rights reserved. Proprietary and confidential.
92% 88% 95%
NGCodec (High)
NGCodec (Base)
NGCodec (Low)
100%
HEVC, AVC
1080p60
encoder
elements
Reference
frame cache
HEVC
1080p60
encoder
elements
Video frame
distribution
HEVC
1080p60
encoder
elements
Memory interface
Rate
control
micro-processor
NAL and
VQ micro-processor

12. ‘Harrier’ Architecture - Parallelism via WPP
Control register interface
HEVC, AVC
1080p60
encoder
elements
HEVC
1080p60
encoder
elements
HEVC
1080p60
encoder
elements
1 engine, no WPP for 1080p
4 engines, 4-way WPP for 4K resolution
© 2014 NGCodec Inc. All rights reserved. Proprietary and confidential.
Engine 1
Engine 2
Engine 3
Engine 4
WPP Processing of 4K (2160p) frame
Reference
frame cache
HEVC
1080p60
encoder
elements
Video frame
distribution
Memory interface
Rate
control
micro-processor
NAL and
VQ micro-processor

13. Architecture - Microprocessors
Microprocessor 1 - replicated per engine
• Motion estimation control
• Inter block partitioning control
Microprocessor 2 - replicated per engine
• Mode Decision
• Intra prediction decision
• Intra block partitioning
Microprocessor 3 - one globally
• NAL unit processing
• Visual quality frame level optimization
Microprocessor 4 - replicated per engine
• Rate control
Microprocessor 5 - one globally
• Look ahead control
© 2014 NGCodec Inc. All rights reserved. Proprietary and confidential.

14. NGCodec Intra prediction Performance
BasketballDrill
© 2014 NGCodec Inc. All rights reserved. Proprietary and confidential.
50
45
40
35
30
25
0 10000 20000 30000 40000 50000 60000
NGCodec_Intra
Exhaustive_HMSplit
Algorithm has very close performance to the HM with a fraction of the
complexity and usage of resources

15. © 2014 NGCodec Inc. All rights reserved. Proprietary and confidential.
Summary
First generation SW H.265/HEVC encoders are available:
but not delivering all the possible benefits
Enhanced HW encoders progressively will deliver:
Higher compression efficiency
Wider color gamut
HDR

16. Download the slides
http://ngcodec.com/imtc14
© 2014 NGCodec Inc. All rights reserved. Proprietary and confidential.