Vectorized Angular Intra Prediction for Practical VVC Encoding

Versatile Video Coding (VVC) provides new coding tools for more efficient intra prediction but with a substantial increase in computational complexity. This paper introduces vectorized kernels for 8-bit angular intra prediction and position dependent intra prediction combination (PDPC), which are carefully optimized for all block sizes and prediction modes of VVC. The proposed kernels streamline the filtering process and utilize optimized memory access patterns. Our standalone tests show that the proposed vectorization achieves speedups of 6.68× for luma and 4.40× for chroma predictions over scalar implementations. Integrating these kernels into the practical uvg266 VVC encoder provides speedups of 1.07× in the slowest configuration and 1.68× in the fastest configuration. The reported speedups are obtained without any coding overhead, so the proposed vectorization plays an integral role in pursuing real-time VVC coding with high coding efficiency.