Accelerating image filters using a custom computing machine

A. Lynn Abbott; Peter M. Athanas; Adit D. Tarmaster

doi:10.1117/12.221346

19 September 1995 Accelerating image filters using a custom computing machine

A. Lynn Abbott, Peter M. Athanas, Adit D. Tarmaster

Proceedings Volume 2607, Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) for Fast Board Development and Reconfigurable Computing; (1995) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.221346
Event: Photonics East '95, 1995, Philadelphia, PA, United States

Abstract

This paper describes the use of the SPLASH-2 custom computing platform for real-time median and morphological filtering images. SPLASH-2 is an FPGA-based attached processor that can be reconfigured to perform a wide variety of tasks. Although not specifically designed for image processing, the architecture is well suited for the repetitive computations and high data transfer rates that characterize most low-level image processing problems. Median filtering is a particularly good benchmark, since nonlinear rank ordering must be performed for 2D neighborhoods at every pixel location in an image. General-purpose workstations are inefficient at such tasks, whereas SPLASH-2 can be configured to perform this at a rate of 30 images per second. This paper presents the hardware/software codesign process that we have used to implement this operation, which can be pipelined with other operations by using additional SPLASH-2 processor boards. The results presented here illustrate that custom computing architectures are much faster than conventional uniprocessors, and offer an attractive altrenative to dedicated special-purpose harware when high performance is required.

Citation Download Citation

A. Lynn Abbott, Peter M. Athanas, and Adit D. Tarmaster "Accelerating image filters using a custom computing machine", Proc. SPIE 2607, Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) for Fast Board Development and Reconfigurable Computing, (19 September 1995); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.221346

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