Patent ID: 8175152

Claim:
A picture coding apparatus for coding a moving picture made up of a series of frames, the picture coding apparatus comprising: an input picture partitioner for dividing an input frame into three or more parts; three or more coding units for compressively coding the parts, each of the coding units coding a different one of the parts which is assigned to said each of the coding units; and a combiner for combining the parts coded by the coding units to obtain compressively coded data for the entire input frame, wherein each coding unit of the three or more coding units comprises: a reference frame memory for storing reference picture data representing the entirety of a frame preceding the input frame among the series of frames; a motion compensator for selecting a portion of the reference picture data stored in the reference frame memory and performing motion compensation, the selected portion of the reference picture data resembling at least a portion of the part of the input frame to be coded by said each coding unit; a compression processor for compressing the part of the input frame to be coded by said each coding unit with reference to the selected portion of the reference picture data and outputting, as first compressed data, the compressed part to be coded by said each coding unit; a coder for coding the first compressed data and outputting the coded first compressed data as first coded data; a compressed stream output port for outputting the first coded data to the combiner and to all of the other of the three or more coding units, so that the respective one of said all of the other of the three or more coding units receives the first coded data outputted from said each coding unit as second coded data for the respective coding unit; a compressed stream input port for receiving second coded data for said each coding unit from said all of the other of the three or more coding units; a decoder for decoding the second coded data for said each coding unit to obtain second compressed data; and a decompression processor for decompressing the first compressed data and the second compressed data to obtain the reference picture data representing the entirety of a frame of the moving picture and storing the reference picture data in the reference frame memory.