Patent ID: 7598957

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 an image processing on image data in the determined units of a fixed unit processing data amount; and (2) a control section that inputs the image data acquired from a preceding stage of its own module to the image processing engine 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 outputs image data which has undergone a predetermined image processing by the image processing engine, or a processing result of the predetermined image processing in units of the determined fixed unit processing data amount to a following stage of its own module; (B) one or more buffer modules having a buffer for storing image data, wherein the image processing section is 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 to at least one of a preceding stage and a following stage of each image processing module which is selected, the one or more image processing modules is selected from a plurality of the image processing modules in order to construct the image processing section for carrying out the desired image processing by the image processing engine, and the buffer module is connected to at least one of an image processing module which is selected, and wherein when the buffer module is connected at a preceding stage of the image processing module, the control section of the image processing module recognizes a fixed reading data amount specific to its own module and sets the fixed reading data amount at the preceding buffer module, and carries out processing of reading in units of the fixed reading data amount, and inputs the read image data to the image processing engine as image data of the fixed unit processing data amount, and when the buffer module is connected at a following stage of the image processing module, the control section recognizes a fixed writing data amount specific to its own module and sets the fixed writing data amount to the following buffer module, and carries out processing of writing in fixed units of the writing data amount.