HIGH BANDWIDTH IMAGE PROCESSING SYSTEM

• US 20090110326A1
• Filed: 10/24/2007
• Published: 04/30/2009
• Est. Priority Date: 10/24/2007
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Kyndryl Incorporated
• Original Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Inventors: Mori, Yumi, Kim, Moon J., Nakano, Hiroki
• Granted Patent: US 8,675,219 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 382/276
• CPC Class Codes: G06T 1/20 Processor architectures; Processor configuration, e.g. pipelining
• CPC Class Codes: G06V 10/94 Hardware or software architectures specially adapted for image or video understanding

Abstract

The present invention provides a high bandwidth image processing system, which generally includes an image processing unit having a set of servers that each have a universal operating system for receiving image data corresponding to a set of images, generating commands for processing the image data, and sending the images and the commands to an image processing unit (also having a universal operating system(s)) of the high bandwidth image processing system. Upon receipt, the image processing unit will recognize and interpret the commands, assign and/or schedule tasks for processing the image data to a set of (e.g., special) processing engines based on the commands, and return results and/or processed image data to the image interface unit.

Claims

1. A high bandwidth image processing system, comprising:

an image interface unit being configured to receive image data from a set of image recordation mechanisms, the image interface unit comprising a set of servers each comprising a universal operating system; and

an image processing unit being configured to receive the image data from the image interface unit, process the image data, and send processed image data to the image interface unit.

2. The high bandwidth image processing system of claim 1, the image interface unit being further configured to send commands to the image processing unit, and the image interface unit and the image processing unit being coupled via a communications switch.

3. The high bandwidth image processing system of claim 1, further comprising a client interface unit for accessing processed image data from at least one of the image processing unit and the image interface unit.

4. The high bandwidth image processing system of claim 1, each of the set of servers further comprising:

a set of image grabbers being configured to receive image data from the set of image recordation mechanisms;

a set of communications cards; and

a set of high density drives (HDDs) for storing the image data collected from the image recordation mechanisms.

5. The high bandwidth image processing system of claim 4, the image processing unit comprising a set of processors, each of the set of processors comprising a communications card.

6. The high bandwidth image processing system of claim 5, further comprising:

a Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) switch coupled to the image processing unit; and

a network file system coupled to the GbE switch.

7. The high bandwidth image processing system of claim 6, the network file system comprising a server having a HDD.

8. The high bandwidth image processing system of claim 1, the image interface unit and the image processing unit being embodied within an image co-processor, the image co-processor communicating with a control processor.

9. The high bandwidth image processing system of claim 1, the universal operating system of each of the set of servers being Linux.

10. A high bandwidth image processing system, comprising:

an image interface unit for receiving image data, for sending the image data and commands for processing the image data, and for receiving processed image data, the image interface unit comprising a universal operating system, client application, an image grabber library, a first communications library, and an image processing command library; and

an image processing unit for receiving the image data and the commands from the image interface unit, for processing the image data, and for returning processed image data to the image interface unit, the image processing unit comprising a universal operating system, cell application, a command dispatcher, an image processing library, a software developer kit library, and a second communications library.

11. The high bandwidth image processing system of claim 10, the cell application processing the image data based on the commands received from the client application, commands being generated using the image processing command library.

12. The high bandwidth image processing system of claim 10, the image interface unit further comprising:

a set of offload stubs;

a communications card, the set of offload stubs and the communications card being used by the client application to send the image data to the cell application and to receive the processed image data from the cell application; and

an image grabber card, the image grabber card being used by the client application to receive the image data from a set of image recordation mechanisms.

13. The high bandwidth image processing system of claim 10, the command dispatcher recognizing the commands, and distributing tasks for processing the image data to special purpose engines.

14. The high bandwidth image processing system of claim 10, the commands and image data being sent from the client application to the cell application using the first communication library, the second communications library and a set of communications cards.

15. The high bandwidth image processing system of claim 10, the image interface unit and the image processing unit each further comprising firmware and a processor.

16. The system of claim 10, the image interface unit and the image processing unit being implemented as a co-processor.

17. A method for processing images, comprising:

receiving image data on an image interface unit from a set of image recordation mechanisms, the image interface unit comprising a set of servers each comprising a universal operating system;

sending the image data and commands for processing the image data to an image processing unit;

processing the image data on the image processing unit based on the commands; and

providing access to processed image data from a client application unit.

18. The method of claim 17, further comprising generating the commands on the image interface unit using an image processing command library.

19. The method of claim 17, further comprising:

interpreting the commands on the image processing unit; and

scheduling tasks for processing the image data on the image processing unit.

20. The method of claim 17, the sending and the returning occurring via communication libraries accessed by the image interface unit and the image processing unit.

21. The method of claim 17, the receiving occurring via a set of image grabbers of the image interface unit.

22. A program product stored on at least one computer readable medium for processing images, the at least one computer readable medium comprising program code for causing at least one computer system to:

receive image data from a set of image recordation mechanisms on an image interface unit comprising a set of servers each comprising a universal operating system;

generate commands for processing the image data;

interpret the commands;

assign tasks to a set of processing engines based on the commands to process the image data; and

process the image data in response to the tasks.

23. The program product of claim 22, the at least one computer readable medium further comprising program code for causing at least one computer system to send processed image data.

24. The program product of claim 22, the commands being generated using an image processing command library.

25. The program product of claim 22, the image data being received by a set of image grabbers.

26. A method for deploying a system for processing images, comprising:

providing a computer infrastructure being operable to;

receive image data from a set of image recordation mechanisms on an image interface unit comprising a set of servers each comprising a universal operating system;

generate commands for processing the image data;

interpret the commands;

assign tasks to a set of processing engines to process the image data based on the commands; and

process the image data in response to the tasks.