A New ASIC for Real-Time Linear Color Space Transforms

Abstract The design and Very Large Scale of Integration (VLSI) implementation of a new Application Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC) which converts, in real-time, the Red, Green and Blue (RGB) color coordinates to the XYZ, YIQ and YVU color coordinates, is presented in this paper. Its frequency of operation is 13.3 MHz and the rate of operations of this ASIC is 66.5 MIPS. The high-speed operation is achieved by pipelining the data in a vector fashion. The ASIC is implemented using a Double Layer Metal (DLM), 1.0 μm, N-well, Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor (CMOS) process provided by the European Silicon Structures (ES2), and it occupies a silicon area of 6.32 mm × 5.11 mm= 32.29 mm2. It is intended to be used in colorimetry instrumentation for color measurement and control, in color machine vision in autonomous applications, where the need for short processing times is crucial and in real-time color image compression applications.