IMAGE CODING OR DECODING DEVICE AND METHOD INVOLVING MULTITHREADING OF PROCESSING OPERATIONS OVER A PLURALITY OF PROCESSORS, CORRESPONDING COMPUTER PROGRAM AND SYNCHRONISATION SIGNAL

摘要

The invention relates to a method of coding or decoding an image comprising macro-blocks which are distributed in lines and columns, whereby the processing of at least one given macro-block, known as a dependent macro-block, requires the pre-processing of at least one other macro-block on which said dependent macro-block depends. Moreover, the macro-blocks are processed sequentially line by line or column by column. The inventive method comprises a step consisting in multithreading the processing of the macro-blocks over N processors, N > 2, comprising the following: separation of the image into N vertical bands each comprising a plurality of lines and at least one column of macro-blocks if the macro-block is processed sequentially line by line, or into N horizontal bands each comprising a plurality of columns and at least one line of macro-blocks if the macro-block is processed sequentially column by column; processing of one of the N bands by each processor; and synchronisation of the processing operations performed by the N processors.