Patent ID: 7864182

Claim:
A method comprising: (a) configuring a plurality of stages of an image pipeline based on configuration information determined for each of the stages, wherein the stages include a first stage, a second stage and a last stage; (b) reading an input tile of pixels from a memory and supplying the input tile of pixels into the first stage, wherein the input tile is a tile of an input image frame, wherein the input tile includes Y1 rows of X1 pixels, wherein the input image frame includes Y2 rows of X2 pixels, and wherein X2>X1 and Y2>Y1; (c) pipeline processing such that each stage of the image pipeline receives data from a previous stage in the image pipeline and performs processing on the data, wherein one of the stages of the pipeline is a zoom stage that can perform a zoom function; (d) writing the output of the last stage of the image pipeline into the memory in the form of an output tile, wherein the input tile and the configuration information are adjusted until the output tile is in a desired location; and (e) repeating (a) through (d) such that a plurality of output tiles form an output image frame, wherein some of the output tiles are wider than others of the output tiles, wherein some of the output tiles are taller than others of the output tiles, and wherein some of the output tiles contain more pixels than others of the output tiles.