Image data buffer apparatus and data transfer system for efficient data transfer

Abstract

An image data buffer apparatus includes a memory, and a FIFO control unit configured to cause the memory to operate as a FIFO and having a write pointer indicative of a write position of the memory and a read pointer indicative of a read position of the memory, wherein the FIFO control unit is configured to store image data as a plurality of blocks in the memory at respective positions successively indicated by the write pointer as the image data are supplied as the blocks contained in an image, to read one of the blocks from the memory at a position indicated by the read pointer, to read, from the memory, partial data that is part of at least one block adjacent to the one of the blocks, and to consolidate the one of the blocks and the partial data for transmission as one consolidated block.

Description

technical field [0001] The present invention generally relates to an image data buffering device and an image transmission processing system, in particular to an image data buffering device and an image transmission processing system for transferring image data in units of blocks. Background technique [0002] In the field of image processing, image data is often divided into multiple blocks, and processing such as filtering or compression coding is performed in units of blocks. When filtering a given block, it is necessary to refer to the data of surrounding pixels outside the block boundary to obtain the filtered values ​​of pixels located near the block boundary. For example, if the size of a block is n×m pixels, calculation-purpose image data of a size corresponding to the filter size is appended outside n×m pixels, thereby providing s×t pixels (s>n and t> m) image data. Then, the obtained image blocks having a size of s×t pixels larger than the original block si...

AI Technical Summary

Problems solved by technology

However, in such a configuration, since s×t pixels are read from the image memory 15 for each block instead of n×m pixels, the amount of data transferred from the image memory 15 increases

In addition, the calculation-purpose image data set around the image data of s×t pixels is read at least twice and at most four times, which means that the efficiency of such data transfer is very low

In configurations where another device also accesses the image memory 15, such an increase in the amount of data transfer is undesirable as it directly leads to performance degradation

Images