This article gives an overview of architectures providing the motion c
ompensation function for a motion picture codec. It does not aim to pr
ovide the complete solution, which will always depend on the user's ap
plication. Several points to note in the design of an architecture are
given. The article then concludes with a more detailed assessment of
architecture requirements for one application example. All the archite
ctures given are based around the ST13220 motion estimation processor
developed by SGS-Thomson Microelectronics.