Picture memory mapping to minimize memory bandwidth in compression and decompression of image sequences

A method of storing a picture in a memory such that bandwidth can be reduced when retrieving an array portion of the picture from the memory, and a memory architecture are disclosed. The memory is subdivided into a plurality of words for storing a picture having rows and columns. The picture is partitioned into two or more stripes each having a predetermined number of columns. The number of bytes in one row of one stripe is equal to the number of bytes in one word, for storing the data in one row of a stripe in one word.