Producing decoded audio at graphics engine of host processing platform

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-9942593-B2
Application number	US-201113024536-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Feb 10, 2011
Priority date	Feb 10, 2011
Publication date	Apr 10, 2018
Grant date	Apr 10, 2018

Abstract

Techniques are disclosed that involve the processing of audio streams. For instance, a host processing platform may receive a content stream that includes an encoded audio stream. In turn, a graphics engine produces from it a decoded audio stream. This producing may involve the graphics engine performing various operations, such as an entropy decoding operation, an inverse quantization operation, and an inverse discrete cosine transform operation. In embodiments, the content stream may further include an encoded video stream. Thus the graphics engine may produce from it a decoded video stream. This audio and video decoding may be performed in parallel.

First claim

The invention claimed is:

1. A method, comprising:
receiving a content stream at a decoder, the content stream including an encoded audio stream comprising audio frames;
combining more than one encoded audio frame in said encoded audio stream into a single larger encoded audio frame to form a modified encoded audio stream such that frame boundaries of said audio encoded frames go away after combining encoded audio frames to form a larger encoded audio frame with a larger frame size; and
producing, in the decoder, a decoded audio stream from the modified encoded audio stream.

2. The method of claim 1 , wherein said producing comprises:
performing an entropy decoding operation;
performing an inverse quantization operation; and
performing an inverse discrete cosine transform operation.

3. The method of claim 2 , wherein the entropy decoding operation is a Huffman decoding operation.

4. The method of claim 1 , wherein the modified encoded audio stream includes one or more audio frames, each audio frame including, for each of a plurality of time samples, multiple subband coefficients, the method further comprising:
formatting one or more of the audio frames to appear as an encoded image frame.

5. The method of claim 1 , wherein said producing comprises placing one or more driver calls to a graphics engine.

6. The method of claim 1 , wherein the content stream further includes an encoded video stream, the method further comprising:
producing a decoded video stream from an encoded video stream.

7. The method of claim 6 , further comprising:
synchronizing the decoded video stream and the decoded audio stream.

8. The method of claim 6 , wherein said producing the decoded audio stream and said producing the decoded video stream are performed in parallel.

9. The method of claim 1 , further comprising sending the decoded audio stream to an audio output device.

10. The method of claim 1 , wherein the decoded audio stream includes a digital pulse-code modulation (PCM) signal.

11. An apparatus, comprising:
a host processing platform to receive a content stream at a decoder, the content stream including an encoded audio stream comprising audio frames;
combine more than one encoded audio frame into a single larger encoded audio frame to form a modified encoded audio stream such that frame boundaries of said audio encoded frames go away after combining encoded audio frames to form a larger encoded audio frame with a larger frame size; and
a graphics engine to produce, in the decoder, a decoded audio stream from the modified encoded audio stream.

12. The apparatus of claim 11 , wherein the encoded audio stream includes one or more audio frames, each audio frame including, for each of a plurality of time samples, multiple subband coefficients; and
wherein the host processing platform is to format one or more of the audio frames to appear as an encoded image frame.

13. The apparatus of claim 11 , the graphics engine is to perform a plurality of operations on the encoded audio stream, the plurality of operations including an entropy decoding operation, an inverse quantization operation, and an inverse discrete cosine transform operation.

14. The apparatus of claim 11 , further comprising an audio output device, and wherein the host processing platform is to send the decoded audio stream to the audio output device.

15. The apparatus of claim 11 , wherein the host processing platform is included in a first processor core of a multi-core processor, and the graphics engine is included in a second processor core of the multi-core processor.

16. The apparatus of claim 11 , further comprising a storage medium to store the content stream.

17. The apparatus of claim 11 , wherein the content stream further includes an encoded video stream, and wherein the graphics engine is to produce a decoded video stream from the encoded video stream in parallel with the production of the decoded audio stream.

Assignees

• Kaburlasos Nikos
• Cheng Scott W
• Jiang Hong
• Stoner Michael D
• Biswal Narayan
• Intel Corp

Inventors

• Kaburlasos Nikos
• Cheng Scott W
• Jiang Hong
• Stoner Michael D
• Biswal Narayan

Classifications

• H04N21/42653

  for processing graphics · CPC title

• H04N21/4143 Primary

  {embedded in a} Personal Computer [PC] · CPC title

• H04N19/42

  characterised by implementation details or hardware specially adapted for video compression or decompression, e.g. dedicated software implementation (H04N19/635 takes precedence) · CPC title

• H04N19/44

  Decoders specially adapted therefor, e.g. video decoders which are asymmetric with respect to the encoder · CPC title

• H04N21/42607

  for processing the incoming bitstream · CPC title