System and method for parallel video processing in multicore devices

A system for parallel processing of H.264 video signal encoding operations, comprising:

• a multi-core processor comprising a plurality of individual processing cores, wherein said multi-core processor is operable to establish a master-slave processing protocol for encoding a video signal, wherein one of said individual processing cores is designated as a master processor and a predetermined number of other individual processing cores are designated as slave processors;
• and
• a shared memory for storing video data frames and control messages for encoding the video data frames by said master processor and said slave processors in accordance with the H.264 high-definition (HD) video encoding standard;
• wherein said master processor dynamically partitions each video data frame into a plurality of partition slices and assigns each partition slice to a corresponding slave processor for H.264 high-definition (HD) video encoding by sending a starting address and ending address for each partition slice assigned to each corresponding slave processor to balance the video data processing load among said slave processors, and wherein said master processor is operable to send the starting address and ending address to each corresponding slave processor when assigning each partition slice to said corresponding slave processor, and is operable to send an update ending address to each corresponding slave processor after assigning each partition slice to said corresponding slave processor.

A method for parallel processing of H.264 video signal encoding operations, comprising:

• using a multi-core processor for encoding a video signal, the multi-core processor comprising a master processor and a plurality of slave processors;
• using a shared memory to store video data frames for encoding by said multi-core processor in accordance with the H.264 video encoding standard;
• and
• using said master processor to dynamically control parallel encoding of said video data frames by said slave processors, wherein said master processor is operable to dynamically partition each data frame, on an intra-frame basis, into a plurality of slices and is further operable to assign said slices to predetermined individual slave processors by sending a starting address and ending address for each partition slice assigned to each corresponding individual slave processor to balance the video data frame processing load among said individual slave processors, wherein the master processor is operable to send an update ending address to each corresponding slave processor after assigning each partition slice to said corresponding slave processor.