Patent ID: 8300704

Claim:
A method of decoding pictures, comprising: receiving, by an information handling system (IHS), an encoded bitstream that includes pictures; partitioning, by the IHS, decoding of the pictures of the encoded bitstream into N sequential stages that process the pictures as decoding pictures, wherein N is the number of sequential stages; mapping, by the IHS, the sequential stages onto N compute elements of the IHS that execute in parallel; storing, in a memory of the IHS, a decoded picture buffer for a first stage of the N sequential stages, the first stage receiving the encoded bitstream; storing, in the memory of the IHS, a respective decoded picture buffer snapshot for each of the sequential stages other than the first sequential stage; and storing, in the memory of the IHS, a decoded picture pool of decoded pictures for sharing among the sequential stages; wherein the decoded picture buffer and decoded picture buffer snapshots include pointers to decoded pictures in the decoded picture pool that the sequential stages need for decoding the encoded bitstream.