A low power video-rate pyramid VQ decoder

Abstract

This paper describes a pyramid vector quantization (VQ) decoder chip used for real-time video decompression. The chip is designed for portable applications with very low power requirements, operating at a 1.35 V supply and consuming 6.7 mW with a 6.4 MHz clock, sufficient to decode 1.27 Mpixels/s for a color display of 176 pixels wide, 240 lines, at 30 frames per second. The chip performs decompression by converting pyramid vector quantization codewords into data values and integrates all functionality on a single die, requiring no external hardware support or memory.