This secondary PCI bus is the main internal bus of the ISE board. This can be dynamically configured to perform a variety of image processing functions. The initial release of the board includes the functions grayscale deskew and grayscale domain image scaling . Planned functions include scale to gray , contrast stretching and connected component analysis . These functions are well suited to hardware implementation, but VLSI chips are not commercially available for most of them.
Programmable hardware is the most economical solution.
Adding a mezzanine board allows expansion up to 64 MBytes. Each application specific daughter board is of a size generous enough to allow several VLSI components and associated memory chips to be used for each function. A number of daughter boards are planned for the most essential functions in document image processing. Custom development of special-purpose accelerators is also planned. These developments will leverage off Picture Elements' strength in conceiving and delivering imaging algorithms at the highest scanning speeds.