A parallel processing system of images

In order to speedup image processing in embedded environment, we construct a parallel processing system of images. The parallel processing system includes a parallel hardware, a new defined language for parallel image processing and a set of software tools. From the view of high performance, low power dissipation and the characteristics of image processing, we construct a SIMD coprocessor as an image processing accelerator. Using a RISC host processor manages the whole system. The SIMD processor is scalable. We also define a new language which is extended from standard C. A new data type "stream" and a new keyword "kernel" are added to the language to explicitly describe parallelism. For the new hardware and language of parallel image processing, we also research software tools for this parallel system. The software tools maps programs to code that runs on the new hardware. For example develop a scheduler to transfer stream data between memories and register files. From the analysis we found that the parallel image processing system can not only match image applications' characteristics but also easy to implement by using VLSI technology. With new language and software tools supporting, an embedded real-time parallel image processing system becomes available for programmers.