Design for Embedded Image Processing on FPGAs

Dr Donald Bailey starts with introductory material considering the problem of embedded image processing, and how some of the issues may be solved using parallel hardware solutions. Field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) are introduced as a technology that provides flexible, fine-grained hardware that can readily exploit parallelism within many image processing algorithms. A brief review of FPGA programming languages provides the link between a software mindset normally associated with image processing algorithms, and the hardware mindset required for efficient utilization of a parallel hardware design. The design process for implementing an image processing algorithm on an FPGA is compared with that for a…