SLIDEX: A Novel Architecture for Sliding Window Processing

Efficient image processing is increasingly crucial in constrained embedded and real-time platforms, especially in emerging applications such as Autonomous Driving (AD) or Augmented/Virtual Reality (AR/VR). A commonality among most image processing operations is their reliance on primitives like convolutions and stencil operations, which typically utilize a sliding window dataflow. Many existing implementations are domain-specific, lacking generality, or are programmable at the cost of sacrificing performance and energy efficiency. Among the latter, the CPU-based platforms that typically rely on Vector Processing Units (VPUs) often miss critical optimization opportunities, particularly those arising from the overlapping nature of the mentioned windowed image processing operations.