APPARATUS FOR AND METHOD OF REDUCING THE MEMORY BANDWIDTH REQUIREMENTS OF A SYSTOLIC ARRAY

摘要

The invention is described in the context of a motion estimator within a video compression system but is applicable to other areas as well. The invention utilizes a plurality of processing elements (14-20) and FIFO arrays (22-28) arranged in a linear array to reduce the memory bandwidth required to process the data within the search window (30-36). Data from the search window is initially loaded into the processing elements and then rotated throughout in order to reduce memory accesses. In addition, the search window is traversed in a particular fashion so as to minimize the number of memory accesses required.