High-Performance VLSI Architecture for the Microsoft ® HD Photo Image Compression Algorithm

The Microsoft HD Photo image format attempts to improve on the JPEG standard by providing improvements in image quality, less artifacts, and higher compression ratios. The algorithm uses a hierarchy of spatial-to-frequency transforms, which requires 4 independent operators to be applied serially to the image data. These operators consist of two hierarchical applications of a pre-filtering transform, which attempts to eliminate blocking artifacts when the image is decoded, and two applications of the Photo Core Transform, a Hadamard-based frequency transform which is very computationally efficient. This architecture represents a VLSI implementation suitable for performing the full transform in a high-performance application.