Pipelined image processing engine

摘要

The present invention related to processing image frames through a pipeline of effects by breaking the image frames into multiple blocks of image data. The example method includes generating a plurality of blocks from each frame, processing each block through a pipeline of effects in a predefined consecutive order, and aggregating the processed blocks to produce an output frame by combining the primary pixels from each processed block. The pipeline of effects may be distributed over a plurality of processing nodes, and each effect may process a block, provided as input to the node. Each processing node may independently process a block using an effect.

主权项

1. A method for processing image frames through a pipeline of effects, the method comprising:
generating a plurality of blocks, each block containing a group of primary pixels and a group of total pixels, the total pixels including any pixels required as input by an effect, from the pipeline of effects, to produce output for the primary pixels, wherein the number of pixels in the group of primary pixels is less than the number of pixels in the group of total pixels; processing each block through the pipeline of effects in a predefined consecutive order, the pipeline of effects being distributed over a plurality of processing nodes, including updating the total pixels in a block with primary pixels from at least one neighboring block after processing a first effect and before processing a second effect; and aggregating the processed blocks to produce an output frame by combining the primary pixels from the processed blocks; wherein each effect, from the pipeline of effects, processes a block, provided as input to the node, to produce output for the primary pixels of the block.