Patent ID: 8804844

Claim:
A method of processing an image, the method comprising: defining an early exit condition for an image processing calculation, wherein completing the image processing calculation in the absence of the early exit condition comprises performing N operations; storing a signed numeric value representing the early exit condition in a hardware status register; initiating the image processing calculation using a plurality of image processing elements, each image processing element comprising an arithmetically-signed accumulator; comparing an output of the plurality of image processing elements to the numeric value representing the early exit condition stored in the hardware status register; selectively changing the numeric value representing the early exit condition based on a probability function of the comparison, wherein the probability function comprises determining a number p of accumulators that have changed sign and satisfying the probability function for 1<p<B wherein B is defined as a total number of accumulators; and exiting the image processing calculation, after performing M<N operations, if the early exit condition is satisfied wherein N, p, B, and M are integers.