The application of parallel DSP networks to real time image processing

Image processing, and especially real time image processing, is naturally a very compute intensive task. These tasks can now be tackled very well with the Texas Instruments TMS320C40 DSP processor. This, as well as having a powerful processing architecture well suited to data intensive signal processing tasks such as image processing, also has six high speed communication ports for transferring data between C40 processors in a network. Coupled with suitable modular C40 based hardware such as that from Loughborough Sound Images, this can provide an extremely powerful and flexible image processing system. This paper presents some results of using C40 processors in practical image processing systems, both a single C40 and multiple C40s. It deals with the real processing speed achievable and techniques to achieve that speed, then the speed of transferring image data between C40s, for example partitioning a grabbed image across to several C40s. It then goes on to demonstrate how an application was developed making use of the above techniques, to give a real time image processing system processing a full 512×512 image at 12.5 frames per second