Single DSC Encoder with Multiple Indexed Color History Buffers
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Solution Overview
Problem
The existing Display Stream Compression (DSC) standard for image compression requires a single indexed color history buffer for each display, leading to costly and power-consuming duplication of encoders for multiple displays, causing mismatched ICH buffer reset behaviors and resulting in corrupted images.
Innovation Solution
Implementing multiple indexed color history buffers that independently control ICH buffer reset behaviors for each horizontal pixel slice, allowing a single encoder to produce multiple display streams, reducing integrated circuit area and power consumption while maintaining image quality.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Quantity of substance
If a single encoder is used to support multiple displays, then hardware cost and power consumption are reduced, but ICH buffer reset behavior becomes mismatched leading to corrupted images
Solution Approach 1:
The patent segments the single encoder's ICH buffer functionality into multiple independent virtual ICH buffers, each associated with a specific display output. This allows independent reset control for each display while using a single physical encoder, resolving the contradiction between hardware reduction and image quality maintenance.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent introduces a display stream identifier as an intermediary to manage multiple display streams within a single encoder. This identifier enables the encoder to track and reset the correct ICH buffer state for each display, preventing corruption while sharing hardware resources.
2Reliability
If multiple encoders are used for each display, then image reconstruction accuracy is maintained, but hardware cost and power consumption increase
Solution Approach 1:
The patent makes a single encoder universal by enabling it to handle multiple display streams simultaneously through virtual ICH buffer instantiation. Each virtual buffer operates independently for its associated display, allowing one encoder to perform the work of multiple encoders while reducing hardware quantity.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent changes the operational parameters of the encoder by introducing display stream identifiers and virtual buffer indices. These parameter changes enable the encoder to dynamically switch between different display contexts and maintain correct ICH buffer states for each display without requiring separate hardware encoders.
3Productivity
If ICH buffer is reset at the beginning of each slice, then compression efficiency is improved, but image quality deteriorates due to loss of historical color information
Solution Approach 1:
The patent applies local quality by allowing different reset behaviors for different regions of the image data stream. Critical regions that benefit from historical color information maintain buffer continuity, while other regions can utilize slice-based resetting for compression efficiency, optimizing both image quality and compression performance locally.
Data Source
AI summary
A single source image encoder encodes more than one display stream, such as multiple display streams each for a different display or multiple display streams for the same display, using multiple indexed color history (ICH) buffers. As applied to a DSC encoder, the same DSC encoder is used to encode more than one DSC compliant display stream. Multiple encoded display bitstreams are output as multiple display data streams to a plurality of displays. Such a configuration can significantly reduce the area cost of an integrated circuit that employs an image encoder since additional encoders are eliminated.