LCEVC Hybrid Driver-level Decoder

The LCEVC hybrid driver-level decoder is a driver-layer solution that utilizes existing hardware blocks and optimizes CPU/GPU resources to deliver high-performance LCEVC decoding on the SoC.

Introduction

Traditionally, video decoders are implemented either in hardware or software. Hardware solutions provide high performance but come with higher costs, while software solutions are more affordable but face performance limitations. The LCEVC Hybrid driver-level solution offers an innovative approach by leveraging existing hardware blocks, such as the Base Video Decoder, Upsample, and Blend, to handle computation-intensive tasks, while LCEVC bitstream decoding is performed in software on the device's CPU. This hybrid solution delivers an optimal balance between decoding performance and cost. Additionally, it is designed to operate at the device driver level, facilitating easy access to hardware resources.

The following diagram provides a high-level overview of how the LCEVC hybrid driver-level decoder functions.

LCEVC hybrid driver-level decoder

• LCEVC Extraction is the module responsible for extracting LCEVC data from the input video buffer.

• LCEVC Decoder is the module that decodes the LCEVC bitstream to generate LCEVC residual planes. It is offered as a software library by V-Nova.

• Base Video Decoder is the module responsible for decoding the base video data. It is typically available as a hardware block on the SoC.

• Upsample is the module that increases the resolution of a video frame. It is typically available as a hardware block in the SoC. The upsampled kernel data will be provided by the LCEVC Decoder.

• Blend is the module that combines multiple video layers to create a composite image or video output. It is typically available as a hardware block on the SoC.

Features of the solution

• High decoding performance: Leveraging the device's hardware blocks, the driver-level decoder solution delivers exceptional decoding performance, often exceeding the capabilities of software decoders. On a quad-core ARM Cortex-A53 processor, the LCEVC decoder is capable of achieving 4K at 60 FPS.

• Transparent application integration: As the name implies, the LCEVC hybrid driver-level solution operates at the device driver level, ensuring transparency to application development. For example, on devices running Android or Android TV, the LCEVC hybrid driver-level solution is integrated into the SoC’s decoder implementation within the OpenMAX or C2 (Codec2) layer. Due to the seamless integration, it remains transparent to players like ExoPlayer, which is built on top of MediaCodec.

• Reduce time-to-market: The hybrid approach allows LCEVC support to be added to existing SoCs through an over-the-air software update, significantly shortening the product's time-to-market cycle.