Conceptual interface and memory-modeling for real-time image processing systems

Most operations invoked in video processing systems are neighborhood oriented. For a video system designer, this limited spatio-temporal collection of pixels represents a natural abstraction. In this paper, we present a basic set of object-oriented design entities. Entities, which can be combined to capture an interface and memory model at a conceptual level, with the neighborhood as an abstraction. These design entities, called IMEM, are implemented as an extension to SystemC. IMEM supports conceptual modeling that excludes implementation details and has explicit data dependency built-in to the model. This makes IMEM a very efficient starting point for design-space exploration and system synthesis. We propose two workflows. The first is a system development workflow, where IMEM represents the starting point of a gradual refinement process, supported by an automated design space exploration step. The second workflow, based on direct mapping of the interface and memory model is presented as being suitable for rapid prototyping. A spatio-temporal noise-reduction filter is selected as a test-vehicle in order to demonstrate the feasibility of IMEM.