INTELLIGENT CAMERA CIRCUIT AND IMAGE PROCESSING CIRCUIT AND METHOD

摘要

An image processing circuit of an intelligent camera apparatus comprises image data processing circuits (12, 13, 16, 15) interconnected by a shared communication bus(10). The image data processing circuits (12, 13, 16, 15) include a programmable stream processing circuit (13) and a reconfigurable circuit (18). The programmable stream processing circuit (13) operates by translating all pixel location dependence of program instructions to dependence on pixel position in a stream of pixel values that is transmitted via the communication bus (10). The reconfigurable circuit (16) can be reconfigured at run time with configurations of a type that affects pixel value processing as well as data dependent pixel addressing involved with said pixel value processing. A run-time command is received to perform a selectable mix of image processing operations including an image stream based operation and a data driven access operation that involves intra-image addressing of pixel values with data driven addresses. In response to the command the programmable stream processing circuit (13) is programmed to perform the image stream based operation and configuration data is loaded into the reconfigurable circuit (16). The loaded configuration data configures the reconfigurable circuit (16) to perform the data driven access operation, including reconfigured data driven intra image selection of addresses for commanding selective transmission of the pixel values for addressed pixel locations over the communication bus (10).