[FFmpeg-devel] Pipeline: H.264 speed improvements

[Måns Rullgård]

Michael Niedermayer <michaelni at gmx.at> writes:

> On Tue, Dec 23, 2008 at 04:08:26AM -0500, Jason Garrett-Glaser wrote:
>> I've put together a list of all the possible speed improvements I can
>> see, including both some obvious ones and non-obvious ones.  If you're
>> interested in implementing anything here, say so to make sure your
>> work isn't duplicated by Michael or I.  Also feel free to discuss some
>> of the more nutty ideas, like the VLC table, or tell me that I'm wrong
>> about something.
>> 
>> Non-assembly stuff:
> [...]
>> av_log2 is unnecessarily powerful for use in h264.c.  All signed
>> golomb values in H.264 fit in 16-bit, and all unsigned golomb values
>> other than headers fit in 8-bit.  Thus all ordinary unsigned golomb
>> code reads can literally be put in a 256-byte VLC table and replaced
>> with a single array lookup.
>
> it may be that all ue golomb coded values are <256 outside the headers,
> though even this seems wrong for mb_skip_run the way i understand the spec.
> But a value of 255 corresponds to a 15bit long vlc code.
> a 256 (or 128) entry LUT limits one to values 0-15 512 (or 1024) to 0-31
>
> Now there are surely a few left that are that small but thats far from
> all non header values.

av_log2() can be trivially implemented on most CPUs using a count
leading zeros instruction.  That should be even faster than a table.
On ARM this instruction takes one cycle.

-- 
M?ns Rullg?rd
mans at mansr.com