How to use high speed reconfigurable FPGA for real time image processing?

Abstract

In France, ten research teams study and build a hardware architecture (ARDOISE) which is dedicated to real time image processing. This architecture uses fast or dynamic reconfiguration allowed by new FPGA circuits. During a video frame duration, several algorithms are computed sequentially on the same hardware. This paper highlights the architectural concepts used to build ARDOISE. Then an analytical model is defined in order to complete the limits and the performances expected in the use of the dynamic reconfiguration scheme. An example in image segmentation is developed to show a possible partitioning methodology.