Patent ID: 8149922

Claim:
A codec device, comprising: (a) a plurality of parsing and decoding functional units (PD FUs) configured to extract, group and output context information, control signals, and data from an input bit stream, the context information corresponding to one of a plurality of codecs; (b) a plurality of macro-block-based functional units (MB-based FUs) comprising block-based process units and configured to decode the data outputted from the plurality of PD FUs in accordance with the control signals and the context information; and (c) a global control unit (GCU) configured to process the control signals and the context information in accordance with the one of a plurality of codecs, and then control the MB-based FUs to form and include a block-based process unit in order to decode the data from the input bit stream corresponding to the control signals and the context information if the block-based process unit is not included in the plurality of MB-based FUs, and control the plurality of MB-based FUs comprising the process units, wherein the control signals indicate whether the block-based process units included in the plurality of MB-based FUs are to be performed, and wherein the GCU is configured to process the control signals and the context information and to send the processed control signals and the processed context information to each functional unit included in the plurality of MB-based FUs, and wherein said context information comprises an AC prediction flag, coded block pattern (CBP), quantization scale, data partition flag, width, height, or short video header flag, or combinations thereof.