A general-purpose vision processor with 160×80 pixel-parallel SIMD processor array

In this paper we present a vision processor, which incorporates a 160×80 SIMD array of pixel-processors. The processor operates with a 100MHz clock and 1.8V supply. The device provides 640 GOPS (binary) and 23 GOPS (greyscale) consuming 0.5 W. The chip occupies 50mm² and is fabricated in a standard 0.18 μm CMOS process. The I/O interface supports 200 MPixels/s (greyscale), 1.6 GPixels/s (binary) and 40 MPixels/s (address-event readout) data rate, and PE-parallel image sensing mode for embedded high-speed vision applications. Experimental results indicate that the performance of the presented chip approaches the efficiency of recently reported application-specific vision processors, while providing full programmability and thus being adjustable to a wide range of applications.