MERGED VLSI IMPLEMENTATION OF HARDWARE OPTIMIZED Q-CODER AND SOFTWARE OPTIMIZED QM-CODER

The present invention includes a method and circuit for the compression encoding and decoding of digital images. In particular, the method is directed to an improved implementation of the QM-Coder as defined in the JBIG Standard and a merged implementation of the QM-Coder as defined in the JBIG Standard with the Q-Coder as defined by the IBM ABIC standard. The improved implementation of the QM-Coder as defined in the JBIG Standard includes an improved CLEARBITS procedure. The merged implementation of the QM-Coder as defined in the JBIG Standard and Q-Coder as defined by the ABIC standard includes the sharing of hardware to reduce implementation logic.