Software architecture for application-driven high-performance image processing

The paper introduces a software architecture to support a user from the image processing community in the development of time-constrained image processing applications on parallel computers. The architecture is based on abstract data types with a well defined interface. The interface separates an application from the actual hardware used. On the application side of the interface the programmer is presented with a familiar (sequential) programming model. On the hardware side of the interface detailed knowledge of a parallel machine may be employed to arrive at efficient implementations of basic functionality. Knowledge of both suitable data distributions for images and performance characteristics of operations on those images allows for automated selection of an appropriate data distribution scheme throughout the application. Experiments show that with little effort reasonable levels of efficiency and scalability are achieved on a 32-node MIMD architecture.