Fidelity-driven runtime thermal management for near-sensor architectures

A method for thermally managing a stacked vision sensor comprising a sensor element stacked with a vision processing unit (VPU) and a memory, the method comprising:

• receiving an image fidelity constraint for the stacked vision sensor from a vision application;
• receiving an indication of operating temperature for the stacked vision sensor;
• and
• cycling the stacked vision sensor between a capture (CAP) mode and a near-sensor processing (NSP) mode to control performance of the sensor element based on the indication of operating temperature and the image fidelity constraint, wherein:
• in the NSP mode, the VPU processes image data captured by the sensor element;
• and
• in the CAP mode, the VPU does not process the image data captured by the sensor element.

Vision circuitry, comprising:

• a stacked vision sensor, comprising:
• a sensor element configured to capture image data;
• a vision processing unit (VPU);
• and
• a memory stacked with the sensor element and the VPU;
• and
• a runtime controller coupled to the stacked vision sensor and configured to dynamically manage a temperature of the stacked vision sensor to control performance of the sensor element by selectively offloading image processing of the image data captured by the sensor element from the VPU to a remote processing unit based on the temperature of the stacked vision sensor and an image fidelity constraint received from a vision application.