Patent ID: 8731044

Claim:
A moving-picture processing apparatus, comprising: a plurality of decoding or encoding units including a first processing unit and a second processing unit; a pre-fetch memory to store a specified part of a reference picture used for inter-frame prediction; and an arbitration unit, wherein first image data included in the specified part of the reference picture stored in the pre-fetch memory is read by the first processing unit to perform first processing for the inter-frame prediction, and second image data included in the specified part of the reference picture stored in the pre-fetch memory is read by the second processing unit to perform second processing for the inter-frame prediction, wherein the first image data read for the first processing from the pre-fetch memory overlaps at least part of the second image data read for the second processing from the pre-fetch memory, the first processing being performed concurrently with the second processing, and wherein the pre-fetch memory is shared by the first processing unit and the second processing unit to store the specified part of the reference picture, the specified part of the reference picture being transferred from an external memory to the pre-fetch memory and accessed by both the first processing unit and the second processing unit, and the arbitration unit is configured to arbitrate between simultaneous access requests, the simultaneous access requests including an access request issued to the pre-fetch memory from the first processing unit and an access request issued to the pre-fetch memory from the second processing unit.