Design of a Programmable Architecture for Cellular Automata Based Image Processing for Smart Camera Chips

DOI: 10.5176/978-981-08-7656-2 A-13

Authors: Marc Reichenbach, Ralf Seidler, Dietmar Fey, Benjamin Pfundt

Abstract: This paper presents a new fully programmable SIMD architecture for image processing using cellular automata (CA). The main benefit is a high processing speed coupled with low power consumption and small chip sizes. In many industrial applications, image processing is mostly carried out by standard PC hardware. Especially in an embedded environment such systems are not applicable because of their high power demands and physical dimensions, resulting in an extraordinary TCO. Instead of this, a smart camera solution featuring an in-camera ASIC could solve this challenge by performing not only frame grabbing, but also image (pre-)processing. Our programmable architecture, called ParCA, is able to accomplish simple image preprocessing tasks at approximately 390 fps for a one megapixel image. By using more complex algorithms ParCA is 40 times faster than an embedded Intel Atom Processor.