A vector-quantization (VQ) processor system has been developed aiming at re
al-time compression of motion pictures using a 0.6-mu m triple-metal CMOS t
echnology. The chip employs a fully parallel single-instruction, multiple d
ata architecture having a two-stage pipeline. Each pipeline segment consist
s of 19 cycles, thus enabling the execution of a single VQ operation in onl
y 19 clock cycles. As a result, it has become possible to encode a full-col
or picture of 640 x 480 pixels in less than 33 ms, i.e,, the real-time comp
ression of moling pictures has become available. The chip is scalable up to
eight-chip master-slave configuration in conducting fully parallel search
for 2-K template vectors. The chip operates at 17 MHz with a power dissipat
ion of 0.29 W under a power-supply voltage of 3.3 V.