1. A method for comparator based quantization acceleration for an encoding process, comprising: computing coefficients for a discrete cosine transform encoding operation; determining a quantization step for use with a quantization operation for each of the coefficients; determine each of the coefficients that are less than or equal to one half of the quantization step by using a comparator configured in accordance with the quantization step; for the coefficients that are less than or equal to one half of the quantization step, transmitting a quantized output value to the encoding process; and for the coefficients that are greater than one half the quantization step, determining quantized output value by executing multiplication logic to compute the quantized output value and transmit the computed quantized output value to the encoding process.