A Programmable-Logic Based Multiprocessor Engine for Real-Time Vision Preprocessing

Abstract

: Real-time vision is central to many embedded applications (e.g. vehicle guidance). It is a computationally intensive task well beyond current general purpose computing platforms such as PCs and workstations. Thus, most real time vision systems need special high performance computing platforms, commonly provided in the form of parallel processing engines or dedicated hardware. It is well known that dedicated hardware has the potential to provide the fastest execution speeds but its rigidity often deters potential users. They prefer the economies of scale and flexibility which programmable systems offer. The proposed architecture uses new generations of re-programmable logic devices and modularised hardware, thereby gaining the performance advantage of hard-wired logic with the flexibility and associated economies of programmable systems. The architecture takes the form of an extensible processing hierarchy consisting of a set of tightly coupled parallel processors, each processing a ..