464.h264ref
SPEC CPU2006 Benchmark Description

Benchmark Name

464.h264ref


Benchmark Author

Karsten Sühring and many others wrote the H.264/AVC reference software implementation. (The list of contributors may also be found in the benchmark tree, as $SPEC/benchspec/CPU2006/464.h264ref/src/contributors.h.)

Tom Pycke <Tom.Pycke [at] telenet.be> has coordinated packaging the reference version for use by SPEC.


Benchmark Program General Category

Video compression


Benchmark Description

464.h264ref is a reference implementation of H.264/AVC (Advanced Video Coding), the latest state-of-the-art video compression standard. The standard is developed by the VCEG (Video Coding Experts Group) of the ITU (International Telecommunications Union, http://www.itu.int) and the MPEG (Moving Pictures Experts Group, http://mpeg.chiariglione.org) of the ISO/IEC (International Standardization Organization, http://www.iso.ch). This standard replaces the currently widely used MPEG-2 standard, and is being applied for applications such as the next-generation DVDs (Blu-ray and HD DVD) and video broadcasting.

The 464.h264ref source code, which is part of SPEC CPU2006, is based on version 9.3 of the h264avc reference implementation downloaded from Karsten Sühring's website (interested readers can get the latest version of the h264avc reference software directly from here). The original sources have been modified to ensure portability, validation, and fairness across multiple hardware and software platforms. Utmost care has been taken to keep the modifications to the minimum so as to ensure the integrity and intent of the original sources.

In the process of converting the original h264avc reference implementation sources (version 9.3) to the SPEC CPU2006 benchmark 464.h264ref, the following changes were made:

This benchmark encodes video streams using 2 different parameter sets (*.cfg files):

These two parameter sets make sure the most processing-intensive algorithms available in the standard are used during the benchmark.


Input Description

For the reference workload, we are using two different files for input. Both are raw (uncompressed) video data in YUV-format.


Output Description

The output for the reference run consists of 6 files:

The output log files and leackybucketparam.cfg (binary format) files for all inputs are verified at the end of each run.


Copyrights

The 464.h264ref benchmarks sources are protected by the original copyright notice that is part of the official h264avc reference software, version 9.3 (jm3.9.zip). Here is the full text of the copyright notice from the copyrights.txt file:

/* 
***********************************************************************
* COPYRIGHT AND WARRANTY INFORMATION
*
* Copyright 2001, International Telecommunications Union, Geneva
*
* DISCLAIMER OF WARRANTY
*
* These software programs are available to the user without any
* license fee or royalty on an "as is" basis. The ITU disclaims
* any and all warranties, whether express, implied, or
* statutory, including any implied warranties of merchantability
* or of fitness for a particular purpose.  In no event shall the
* contributor or the ITU be liable for any incidental, punitive, or
* consequential damages of any kind whatsoever arising from the
* use of these programs.
*
* This disclaimer of warranty extends to the user of these programs
* and user's customers, employees, agents, transferees, successors,
* and assigns.
*
* The ITU does not represent or warrant that the programs furnished
* hereunder are free of infringement of any third-party patents.
* Commercial implementations of ITU-T Recommendations, including
* shareware, may be subject to royalty fees to patent holders.
* Information regarding the ITU-T patent policy is available from
* the ITU Web site at http://www.itu.int.
*
* THIS IS NOT A GRANT OF PATENT RIGHTS - SEE THE ITU-T PATENT POLICY.
************************************************************************
*/

Disclaimer

The source, config, and input data files which are a part of the 464.h264ref benchmark are solely provided for benchmarking as part of SPEC CPU2006 and must not be used as a tool for encoding. This disclaimer is provided in addition to the one that comes with the official h264avc reference software, version 9.3 (jm93.zip) as documented in the disclaimer.txt file:

/*
 * Disclaimer of Warranty
 *
 * These software programs are available to the user without any
 * license fee or royalty on an "as is" basis. The ITU-T
 * disclaims any and all warranties, whether express, implied, or
 * statutory, including any implied warranties of merchantability
 * or of fitness for a particular purpose.  In no event shall the
 * copyright-holder be liable for any incidental, punitive, or
 * consequential damages of any kind whatsoever arising from the
 * use of these programs.
 *
 * This disclaimer of warranty extends to the user of these programs
 * and user's customers, employees, agents, transferees, successors,
 * and assigns.
 *
 * The ITU-T does not represent or warrant that the programs furnished
 * hereunder are free of infringement of any third-party patents.
 * Commercial implementations of ITU-T standards, including shareware,
 * may be subject to royalty fees to patent holders.  Information
 * regarding the ITU patent policy is available from the ITU
 * Web site at http://www.itu.int.
 *
 */

Programming Language

C


Known portability issues

None


Portability issues fixed subsequent to the release of SPEC CPU2006 V1.0


References


Last updated: $Date: 2011-08-16 18:23:17 -0400 (Tue, 16 Aug 2011) $