Visual Cortex Inspired Pixel-Level Re-configurable Processors for Smart Image Sensors

This paper presents a reconfigurable hardware architecture of smart image sensors to speed up low-level image processing applications at the pixel level. For each pixel in the sensor plane, the design includes an activation module and a processor. The processor has a basic structure which is common to all applications and reconfigurable segments for specific applications. Visual cortex inspired computing, like, Predictive Coding in time is implemented in the activation module to remove temporal redundancy. The ASIC implementation shows the design saves up to 84.01% dynamic power and achieves 9x speedup at 800 MHz by accurate prediction.