Scalable architecture for rank order filtering

A rank order filter, comprising:

• the rank order filter being associated with a virtual filter window, the virtual filter window being a number NZ+1 concatenated real filter windows;
• the number NZ+1 being a height of the virtual filter window minus a height of the real filter windows, wherein each of the real filter windows are of a same dimension;
• a filter core including a stage of data registers, a stage of comparison blocks configured for registering compare results, and a stage of shift registers;
• the virtual filter window configured for input of an integer multiple of NI samples to the filter core;
• the filter core configured for input of the NI samples on a clock cycle of a filter core clock;
• wherein the filter core inputs the integer multiple of the NI samples for a number of clock cycles of the filter core clock, the number of the clock cycles being equivalent to the integer multiple;
• wherein the virtual filter window spans padding samples, the padding samples capable of being part of the NI samples;
• wherein the NI samples are capable of including both real samples and the padding samples, the real samples being associated with actual pixel information;
• and
• the filter core configured to make available all of the compare results for the stage of shift registers for generating NZ+1 outputs on each clock cycle of the filter core clock.