Realtime MPEG video via software decompression on a PA-RISC processor

Abstract

This paper describes the first software implementation of an MPEG video decoder that runs at realtime rates of 30 frames per second, on a general purpose microprocessor. Previously, realtime MPEG decoding could only be achieved by using special-purpose MPEG or video chips, with "programmability" either nonexistent or limited to low-level firmware. In this paper, we describe how synergistic software and hardware optimizations allow us to implement realtime, high-fidelity MPEG video and audio decompression in a software video player written in C, running on a PA-RISC microprocessor in the entry-level HP712 workstations. The PA-7100LC microprocessor described here is a fully-compliant PA-RISC 1.1 general purpose processor with a few generic instructions added to speedup parallel arithmetic on subword (16-bit) data.