A low-power parallel processor IC for digital video cameras

We present a digital signal processor to be combined with a 30 frames per second VGA-format CMOS or CCD image sensor or any other source of digital video data. The processor is fully programmable and therefore able to run a variety of algorithms ranging from image communication to machine vision. The IC comprises a parallel processor array and a special purpose controller to achieve high computational performances (up to 5 GOPS) with a very modest power consumption. This can go down to 30 mWatts for simple applications such as a digital camera for video conferencing. The chip has been realized in a 0.18 µm CMOS process and takes up an area of 22 mm².