When compared to a vision processing system consisting of a camera and a digital processor, a vision chip provides many system level advantages. A main reason is the information transfer bottleneck between the imager and the processor. In vision chips information between various levels of processing is processed and transferred in parallel. Many also have local and global adaptation capabilities which further enhances their dynamic range.
Conventional cameras are at best able to perform global automatic gain control.
There is also no energy spent for transferring information from one level of processing to another level. From a system design perspective this is a great advantage over camera-processor option. The precision in analog VLSI systems is affected by many factors, which are not usually controllable. As a result, if the algorithm does not account for these inaccuracies, the processing reliability may be severely affected. Vision chips also use unconventional analog circuits which may not be well characterized and understood.