Efficient SIMD and Algorithmic Optimization Techniques for H264 Decoder on Cortex A9

H264 standard has dominated and is continuing to dominate the video codec market for more than a decade. This paper explains the two novel optimization techniques conducted on H.264 decoder, Cortex A9 platform, to get the best performance. It gives a brief overview of the H.264 decoder and ARM Neon architecture before explaining the various optimization techniques we have executed on the decoder.

 In this paper, we propose and explain two efficient optimization approaches of the H.264 decoder.

• The first method exploits efficient utilization of SIMD for deblocking filter.
• The second method uses algorithmic level optimization in the core decoding path upon a thorough understanding of the H.264 video standard.