Evaluation of Two Real Time Image Processing Architectures

This paper presents a study of the impact of MMX technology in image processing and machine vision application, which, because of their hard real time constrains, is an undoubtedly challenging task. A comparison with a traditional scalar code and with another parallel SIMD architecture (IMAP-VISION board) is discussed with emphasize of the particular programming strategies for speed optimization. More precisely we discuss the low level and intermediate level image processing algorithms, which are best suited for parallel SIMD implementation. High-level image processing algorithms are more suitable for parallel implementation on MIMD architectures. While the IMAP-Vision system performs better because of the large number of processing elements, the MMX processor remains a good candidate for low-level image processing.