Apparatus and method for MPEG video decompression

A method to decode an encoded MPEG video data stream, said method comprising the steps of:

• portioning said decode of said encoded MPEG video data stream into memocompute intensive tasks which require extensive memory and computational resources and non memory-compute intensive tasks which do not require extensive memory or computational resources;
• performing said non memory-compute intensive tasks through software modules executing on a processor to produce preprocessed symbol stream datastructure for each video frame, comprising the steps of:
• parsing said encoded MPEG video data stream using variable length decoding to produce parsed video data stream;
• performing inverse quantization on said parsed video data stream to produce said quantized video data stream;
• performing inverse discrete cosine transformation on said quantized video data stream to produce cosine transformed video data stream;
• formatting said cosine transformed video data stream as said preprocessed symbol stream datastructure;
• and
• writing said preprocessed symbol stream datastructure to said memory buffer;
• storing said preprocessed symbol stream data structure in a memory buffer;
• performing said memory-compute intensive tasks in dedicated video hardware to produce a decoded video frame;
• synchronizing said non memory-compute intensive tasks performed through said software modules executed by said processor and said memory-compute intensive tasks performed by said dedicated video hardware;
• and
• displaying said decoded video frame on a display device.

An apparatus for decoding an encoded MPEG video data stream by partitioning said decoding into non memory-compute intensive tasks and memory-compute intensive tasks, said apparatus comprising:

• a bus interace;
• a processor coupled to said bus interface, said processor configured to execute one or more software modules of said plurality of software modules stored in said system memory to:
• parse said encoded MPEG video stream using variable length decoding to produce parsed video data stream;
• perform inverse quantization on said parsed video data stream to produce said quantized video data stream;
• format said quantized video data stream as said preprocessed symbol stream datastructure;
• and
• store said preprocessed symbol stream datastructure in said system memory;
• a system memory coupled to said bus interface, said system memory configured to store a plurality of software modules which can he executed on said processor, one or more software modules of said plurality of software modules configured to perform said non memory-compute intensive tasks to produce preprocessed symbol stream datastructure;
• dedicated video hardware coupled to said bus interface, said dedicated video hardware configured to execute said memory-compute intensive tasks to produce decoded video data to be display on a display device;
• and
• dedicated memory coupled to said dedicated video hardware.

An apparatus for decoding an encoded MPEG video data stream by partitioning said decoding into non memory-compute intensive tasks and memory-compute intensive tasks, said apparatus comprising:

• a bus interface;
• a processor coupled to said bus interface, said processor configured to execute one or more software modules of said plurality of software modules stored in said system memory to:
• parse said encoded MPEG video stream using variable length decoding to produce parsed video data stream;
• perform inverse quantization on said parsed video data stream to produce said quantized video data stream;
• perform inverse discrete cosine transformation on said quantized video data stream to produce cosine transformed video data stream;
• format said cosine transformed video data stream as said preprocessed symbol stream datastructure;
• and
• store said preprocessed symbol stream datastructure in said system memory;
• a system memory coupled to said bus interface, said system memory configured to store a plurality of software modules which can be executed on said processor, one or more software modules of said plurality of software modules configured to perform said non memory-compute intensive tasks to produce preprocessed symbol stream datastructure;
• dedicated video hardware coupled to said bus interface, said dedicated video hardware configured to execute said memory-compute intensive tasks to produce decoded video data to be display on a display device;
• and
• dedicated memory coupled to said dedicated video hardware.