A VLSI IMPLEMENTATION OF THE INVERSE DISCRETE COSINE TRANSFORM

Abstract

The Inverse Discrete Cosine Transform (IDCT) is an important function in HDTV, digital TV and multimedia systems complying with JPEG or MPEG standards for video compression. However, the IDCT is computationally intensive and therefore very expensive to implement in VLSI using direct matrix multiplication. By properly arranging the input coefficient sequence and the output data, the rows and columns of the transform matrix can be reordered to build modular regularity suitable for custom implementation in VLSI. This regularity can be exploited, so that a single permutation can be used to derive each output column from the previous one using a circular shift of an accumulator’s input data multiplied in a special sequence. This technique, using only one 1-dimensional IDCT processor and seven constant multipliers, and its implementation are presented. Operation of 58 MHz under worst case conditions is easily achieved, thus making the design applicable to a wide range of video and real time image processing applications. Fabricated in 0.5 micron triple metal CMOS technology, the IDCT contains 70,000 transistors occupying 7 mm2 square silicon. The design has been used on an AT&T MPEG video decoder chip.