Hardware-adaptable watermark systems
First Claim
1. A watermark decoder comprising:
- a synchronization portion; and
a decoding portion;
at least one of said portions being implemented using hardware circuitry that was designed and fabricated to form part of a watermark decoder, said at least one portion including first means for re-parameterizing one or more facets of its operation to permit customization of said portion, either at a time when the decoder is built, or after it has been placed into service, said first means comprising an application-specific instruction set processor, a cross-bar interconnect, and a memory, the memory being controlled to issue a timed sequence of on/off instructions to plural cross-bar junctions in said cross-bar interconnect.
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Accused Products
Abstract
There are many advantages to implementing a watermark-based system using dedicated hardware, rather than using software executing on a general purpose processor. These include higher speed and lower power consumption. However, hardware implementations incur substantial design and development costs. Moreover, because each watermarking application has its own design constraints and parameters, it has not been cost-effective to develop a hardware chip design for each, since such chips would typically not be manufactured in volumes sufficient to bring per-unit costs down to an acceptable level. The present technology provides various techniques for making watermarking hardware adaptable, so that a single chip can serve multiple diverse watermark applications. By so-doing, the advantages of hardware implementation are made available where it was formerly cost-prohibitive, thereby enhancing operation of a great variety of watermark-based systems.
33 Citations
25 Claims
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1. A watermark decoder comprising:
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a synchronization portion; and a decoding portion; at least one of said portions being implemented using hardware circuitry that was designed and fabricated to form part of a watermark decoder, said at least one portion including first means for re-parameterizing one or more facets of its operation to permit customization of said portion, either at a time when the decoder is built, or after it has been placed into service, said first means comprising an application-specific instruction set processor, a cross-bar interconnect, and a memory, the memory being controlled to issue a timed sequence of on/off instructions to plural cross-bar junctions in said cross-bar interconnect. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10)
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11. A watermark decoder comprising:
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a synchronization portion; and a decoding portion; at least one of said portions being implemented using hardware circuitry that was designed and fabricated to form part of a watermark decoder, said at least one portion including first means for re-parameterizing one or more facets of its operation to permit customization of said portion, either at a time when the decoder is built, or after it has been placed into service; the watermark decoder further including a series of pipelined modules, wherein the first means includes data packet intercept control logic that selectively intercepts data output from one pipelined module in said series, and passes the intercepted data to a processor for additional processing that yields a processed data packet, before re-introducing said processed data packet to an input of a subsequent one of said plural pipelined modules. - View Dependent Claims (12)
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13. A watermark decoder comprising:
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a synchronization portion; and a decoding portion; at least one of said portions being implemented using hardware circuitry that was designed and fabricated to form part of a watermark decoder, said at least one portion including first means for re-parameterizing one or more facets of its operation to permit customization of said portion, either at a time when the decoder is built, or after it has been placed into service; the watermark decoder further including an image standardization portion, said image standardization portion being implemented using hardware circuitry that was designed and fabricated to form part of a watermark decoder, said image standardization portion including second means for re-parameterizing one or more facets of its operation to permit customization of said portion, either at a time when the decoder is built, or after it has been placed into service; the watermark decoder also including a series of pipelined modules, wherein; the first means comprises at least one of; (a) a hardware register that is writable by register control circuitry; (b) an application-specific instruction set processor, a cross-bar interconnect, and a memory, the memory being controlled to issue a timed sequence of on/off instructions to plural cross-bar junctions in said cross-bar interconnect; and (c) data packet intercept control logic that selectively intercepts data output from one pipelined module in said series, and passes the intercepted data to a processor for additional processing that yields a processed data packet, before re-introducing said processed data packet to an input of a subsequent one of said plural pipelined modules; and the second means comprises at least one of the foregoing (a), (b) or (c); and the watermark decoder includes;
at least (a) and (b), or (a) and (c), or (b) and (c).
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14. A method comprising the acts:
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obtaining first and second identical watermark decoder chips, said chips each including a synchronization portion and a decoding portion, said chips each having been designed and fabricated to form part of a watermark decoder; parameterizing the first watermark decoder chip to serve in a first application; and parameterizing the second watermark decoder chip to serve in a second application; wherein at least one of the following parameters is different between the first and second applications;
image size, watermark block size, expected illumination, forward error correction coding algorithm, a number of trial seeds for iterative-based search methods, iteration counts, and watermark reference signals. - View Dependent Claims (15, 16)
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17. A method employing a watermark decoder chip, said chip including a synchronization portion and a decoding portion, said chip having been designed and fabricated to form part of a watermark decoder, the method comprising the acts;
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(a) parameterizing said watermark decoder chip with first parameters to enable the chip to decode watermarks of a first type; and (b) plural months after performing act (a), parameterizing said watermark decoder chip with second parameters to enable the chip to decode watermarks of a second type different than the first type; wherein watermarks of said second type would have been undecodable when the watermark decoder chip was parameterized with said first parameters. - View Dependent Claims (18)
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19. A watermark decoder comprising:
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an image standardization portion; a synchronization portion; and a decoding portion; at least one of said synchronization or decoding portion being implemented using hardware circuitry that was designed and fabricated to form part of a watermark decoder, said at least one synchronization or decoding portion including first means for re-parameterizing one or more facets of its operation to permit customization of said portion, either at a time when the decoder is built, or after it has been placed into service; at least said image standardization portion being implemented using hardware circuitry that was designed and fabricated to form part of a watermark decoder, said image standardization portion including second means for re-parameterizing one or more facets of its operation to permit customization of said portion, either at a time when the decoder is built, or after it has been placed into service. - View Dependent Claims (20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25)
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Specification