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AssigneeMercury Computer Systems, Inc.
InventorsScott A. Thieret, Detlev Stalling, Malte Westerhoff
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The invention provides, in some aspects, methods and apparatus for signal and/or image processing which perform convolution-based filtering utilizing a graphics processing unit (GPU, also called “graphics card”) to compute multiple output pixels at once. This has the advantage of saving memory bandwidth, while leveraging the GPUs vector multiplication and dot product units during the calculation. Related aspects of the invention provide such methods and apparatus in which multiple output pixels are computed simultaneously by using render targets with more than one channel, e.g., an RGBA render target, or multiple render targets, or a combination thereof. By way of non-limiting example, methods and apparatus according to the invention implement convolution on a GPU by executing the steps of defining input image I(x,y) as input texture of size Nx×Ny; defining an RGBA render target (output) of size Nx/4×Ny; and, for each RGBA output pixel aggregating o(x,y) by (i) reading all input pixels I(x*4+i,y), with i=−4,0,4, and computing o(x,y) for the all four components of the output tuple.
A method for simultaneously convolving a plurality of digital image data points into output data distributed in multi-channel output targets, comprising:
A method for convolving digital image data with filter values that are the product of dimensionally-separable functions into output data distributed in multi-channel output targets, comprising:
A method for convolving digital image data with a one-dimensional filter having a constant value to produce output data distributed in multi-channel output targets, comprising:
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.