MIP: A flexible, microprogrammable image processor

This paper presents an experimental, micro-programmable processor intended for the efficient processing of multiband images. The processor is attached to a commercially available image display terminal and operates under the control of a host computer. Flexibility and programming easiness have been the most important design objectives. Main characteristics of the processor are the following: Four-stage pipe-line architecture, dedicated arithmetic and logic unit for address computation, fixed-point and floating-point instructions, microprogram memory separated from image store, look-up tables for fast implementation of some functions and 16-Mbyte image storage addressing capability. The processor performs about 3.6 millions of fixed-point instructions per second.