Patent ID: 7595803

Claim:
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 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, the image processing section being constructed in response to an instruction of a desired image processing by a user and by individual modules being connected in a pipeline form or a directed acyclic graph form, such that the buffer module is connected at least one of a preceding stage and a following stage of each image processing module which is selected, and the one or more image processing modules being selected, in order to construct the image processing section to perform the desired image processing, from a plurality of types of image processing modules, and the image processing engine of each image processing module having mutually different types or contents of image processings, wherein the control section of the image processing module, in a case in which the buffer module is connected at a following stage of its own module, recognizes a fixed write data amount specific to its own module and sets the fixed write data amount at the following buffer module, and carries out processing of writing, in units of the fixed write data amount, image data, which is obtained by the image processing engine carrying out the predetermined image processing on inputted image data, to the buffer of the following buffer module, and the image processing module is realized by a program, which corresponds to the image processing engine, and a program, which corresponds to the control section, being executed by a CPU of the image processing device, and a portion of or an entirety of the program corresponding to the control section is used in common for, among the plurality of types of image processing modules, image processing modules whose units of writing image data to the buffer of the buffer module connected at the following stage of its own module are the same.