Reconfigurable computing system for image processing via the internet

摘要

In this paper, we present the results obtained inside the research line SIRVA of the project TRACER. We can summarize these results in two aspects. On the one hand, a client/server Internet system has been developed. This system provides services of image processing via web by means of algorithms implemented in reconfigurable circuits (FPGAs). In this way, we offer a platform open to the scientific community, through a well-prepared communication system, providing the reconfigurable computing advantages where these resources are not physically available. Furthermore, this platform allows the performance comparison between the software and hardware (FPGA) implementation of the same image processing operation. Therefore, users, via the Internet and from anywhere, can check in a practical way the performance improvement produced by the FPGA use (in fact, some of our FPGA-based implementations are even more than 139 times faster than the corresponding software implementation), redounding to a greater diffusion of the FPGA virtues. On the other hand, a web repository of artificial-vision problems has also been created with growing dimensions, including a complete description of each problem, hardware and software solutions, practical results and links of interest. This repository is open to any external collaboration, being very easy to extend it with the description of new artificial-vision problems or adding new languages to existent descriptions.