Patent ID: 8204132

Claim:
An H.264 decoder equipped with a plurality of operation units, the H.264 decoder comprising: a header decoding unit for decoding a Network Adaptation Layer (NAL) header and slice header data of received compressed image data; a memory unit for storing the decoded compressed image data and synchronization information related to each macroblock included in the compressed image data; each of the plurality of operation units: reading out data of a macroblock upon which a decoding operation is to be performed; performing a first decoding operation of the macroblock with reference to synchronization information related to the macroblocks, wherein the first decoding operation is an operation for decoding data including information needed to determine an operation order of macroblocks; updating the synchronization information according to a result of the first decoding operation; performing a second decoding operation of the macroblock according to a preset condition and the updated synchronization information; performing a third decoding operation of macroblocks when the first and second decoding operations of all the macroblocks included in the compressed image data are completed, wherein the third decoding operation is an operation for reducing a degradation in quality of a blocking picture of a boundary line among the macroblocks, a macroblock assigning unit determining numbers of macroblocks for which the plurality of operation units perform operations and providing the numbers of macroblocks to respective ones of the operation units; and a decoding image output unit for outputting results of the operations as decoded image data related to the compressed image data when the third decoding operation of all the macroblocks included in the compressed image data is completed.