Patent ID: 8559524

Claim:
A video decoding apparatus using a data and function splitting scheme, the apparatus comprising: a variable length decoding unit configured to perform variable length decoding and parsing on a bit stream of the video to acquire residual data and a decoding parameter, and to split the residual data and the decoding parameter by row; N number of clusters arranged in a unidirectional loop, each cluster having a corresponding shared memory that receives an output only from said each cluster for exclusive use by one of the clusters immediately downstream from said each cluster, each cluster having M number of resources; and N number of data memories supporting data communication between the variable length decoding unit and the N number of clusters, wherein each cluster splits a decoding function into the M number of functions to be respectively processed by the M number of resources, acquires a row of the residual data and the decoding parameter from the variable length decoding unit, acquires macroblock (MB) processing information from a corresponding shared memory of one of the clusters immediately upstream from said each cluster, and splits the acquired residual data, decoding parameter and MB processing information to thereby process the same using the M number of resources; each cluster further includes (M−1) number of resource shared memories, each being exclusively shared by neighboring two of the M number of resources, to thereby support inter-resource data communication between the neighboring two resources; and N and M are natural numbers larger than 1.