Patent ID: 7602393
Filing Date: 2009-10-13
Classification: G06T

Abstract:
1. An image processing device comprising: an image processing section, the image processing section having: (A) one or more image processing modules, each image processing module having: (1) an image processing engine that determines a fixed unit processing data amount specific to the image processing module and carries out a predetermined image processing on image data in the determined units of a fixed unit processing data amount, and (2) a control section inputting, to the image processing engine, image data, which is acquired from a preceding stage of its own module, in data amount units needed in order for the image processing engine to carry out processing in determined fixed units of the unit processing data amount, and outputting, to a following stage of its own module, image data, which has undergone a predetermined image processing by the image processing engine, or processing results of the predetermined image processing in units of the determined fixed unit processing data amount; and (B) one or more buffer modules having a buffer for storing image data and a buffer control section, the image processing section being constructed in response to an instruction of a desired image processing by a user by connecting individual modules in a pipeline form or a directed acyclic graph form, such that the buffer module is connected at at least one of a preceding stage and a following stage of each image processing module which is selected, the one or more image processing modules being selected from a plurality of types of image processing modules, in order to construct the image processing section to perform the desired image processing, and the image processing engine of each image processing module having mutually different types or contents of image processings, wherein the buffer control section: in a case in which an image processing module is connected at each of a preceding stage and a following stage of its own module, (1) when image data is outputted from the preceding image processing module of its own module, acquires from the preceding image processing module a fixed write data amount specific to the preceding image processing module, and carries out processing of causing writing of the outputted image data, to a storage region on the buffer which can store data of the fixed write data amount, immediately if the following image processing module is not in the midst of image data reading with respect to the buffer, or after completion of reading if the following image processing module is in the midst of image data reading with respect to the buffer, and (2) when image data is requested from the following image processing module of its own module, acquires from the following image processing module a fixed read data amount, specific to the following image processing module, and carries out processing of causing the following image processing module to read, in units of the fixed read data amount the image data which is stored in the buffer, immediately if the preceding image processing module is not in the midst of image data writing with respect to the buffer, or after writing is completed if the preceding image processing module is in the midst of image data writing with respect to the buffer.