FPGA implementation of HEVC intra prediction using high-level synthesis

Abstract

Intra prediction algorithm in the recently developed High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) standard has very high computational complexity. High-level synthesis (HLS) tools are started to be successfully used for FPGA implementations of digital signal processing algorithms. Therefore, in this paper, the first FPGA implementation of HEVC intra prediction algorithm using a HLS tool in the literature is proposed. The proposed HEVC intra prediction hardware, in the worst case, can process 35 full HD (1920×1080) video frames per second. Using HLS tool significantly reduced the FPGA development time. Therefore, HLS tools can be used for FPGA implementation of HEVC video encoder.