Methods and apparatus to provide an efficient safety mechanism for signal processing hardware

A hardware accelerator comprising:

• an unprotected memory configured to store a first set of data from an input signal, wherein the first set of data corresponds to a corruption of an output data set that is less than a threshold amount of corruption;
• a protected memory configured to store a second set of data from the input signal, wherein the second set of data corresponds to the corruption of the output data set that is more than the threshold amount of corruption;
• and
• logic configured to process the input signal;
• and
• an output interface to output the processed input signal.

A non-transitory computer readable medium comprising instructions which, when executed, cause a machine to at least:

• receive pixel data from an unprotected memory;
• select a pixel from the pixel data for filtering, wherein the pixel is associated with a pixel value;
• filter the pixel by:
• determining a neighbor array of neighboring pixels for the pixel, wherein each of the neighboring pixels have respective pixel values;
• determining a minimum value and a maximum value of the respective pixel values of the neighboring pixels in the neighbor array;
• comparing the pixel value with the maximum value;
• in response to the pixel value being greater than the maximum value, assigning the pixel value to the maximum value;
• comparing the pixel value with the minimum value;
• and
• in response to the pixel value being less than the minimum value, assigning the pixel value to the minimum value;
• and
• output the pixel value to a memory.