Patent ID: 7609297

Claim:
A digital imaging apparatus, comprising: an optical sensor converting an object image into a detected image; an analog-to-digital converter coupled to the optical sensor, the analog-to-digital converter converting the detected image to digital image information; a plurality of heterogeneous computational units processing the digital image information to produce a processed digital image, the plurality of heterogeneous computational units including a first computational unit having a first architecture of a first plurality of computational elements each including algorithmic logic for simple computations, a data input and a data output, and a second computational unit having a second digital signal processing architecture of a second plurality of computational elements each including algorithmic logic for digital signal processing, a data input and a data output; and an interconnection network coupled to the plurality of heterogeneous computational units and to the analog-to-digital converter, the interconnection network providing the digital image information to the plurality of heterogeneous computational units, configuring the plurality of heterogeneous computational units for performance of a first imaging function on the digital imaging information in response to configuration information that configures interconnections between at least the first plurality of computational elements and simultaneously in response to different configuration information to configure interconnections between the second plurality of computational elements, and reconfiguring the plurality of heterogeneous computational units for performance of a second imaging function on the digital image information in response to configuration information that reconfigures the interconnections between at least the first plurality of computational elements, the first imaging function being different than the second imaging function.