Efficient collaging of a large image

One or more computer-storage media having computer-executable instructions embodied thereon, that when executed by a computing system having a processor and memory, cause the computing system to perform a method, the method comprising:

• receiving a first plurality of image data inputs at a first node;
• receiving a second plurality of image data inputs at a second node, wherein the first node and the second node provide parallel processing in a distributed computing environment;
• without performing a file system memory Input/Output (I/O) operation, intra-node merging portions of the first plurality of image data inputs at the first node forming a first merged image data set;
• receiving metadata from a second node about a second merged image data set formed at the second node from the second plurality of image data inputs;
• communicating, memory-to-memory from the second node to the first node, a tile portion of the second merged image data for a cross-node merge;
• and
• at the first node, cross-node merging the tile portion of the second merged data set with the first merged image data set at the first node to form a cross-node merged image data set.

A computing system for parallel processing image data using map-reduce and message passing interface communication for collaging image data, the system comprising:

• a first computing node, the first computing node comprising:
• (1) a processor,
• (2) processor memory,
• (3) inter-node data switching component, and
• (4) computer-storage media having computer-executable instructions embodied thereon to perform a method, the method comprising intra-node merging of image data and inter-node merging of image data, wherein the intra-node merge of data produces a merged image data set that is not written to a file system memory;
• and
• a second computing node, the second computing node comprising:
• (1) a processor,
• (2) processor memory,
• (3) inter-node data switching component, and
• (4) computer-storage media having computer-executable instructions embodied thereon to perform the method.