The invention discloses a coding unit (CU) division method applied to high efficiency video coding (HEVC), and relates to a HEVC technology. The invention aims at solving the problem that the existingHEVC coding technology is high in computing complexity and slow in coding speed. The method comprises the steps of 1, if the depth of the current CU is less than a minimum depth, turning to the step5; if the depth of the current CU is more than or equal to the maximum depth, ending; and otherwise turning to the step 2; 2, performing interframe prediction coding of 2N*2N, 2N*N and N*2N modes on the current CU, computing rate-distortion cost, if the rate-distortion cost is less than a threshold, ending, and otherwise, turning to the step 3; 3, performing interframe prediction coding of 2N*2N and N*N modes , computing the rate-distortion cost, if the rate-distortion cost is less than a threshold, ending, and otherwise, turning to the step 4; 4, judging whether the current CU reaches the maximum depth, if yes, ending, and otherwise, turning to the step 5; and 5, continuously dividing the current CU into four N*N sub-CU with the same size, and turning to the step 1. The method provided bythe invention is applied to the field of HEVC.