Process Chaining Without Image and Performance Loss for Pencil Drawing Style Image Conversion in High-Level Synthesis

Abstract

We are developing high-performance and low-power non-photorealistic rendering hardware for an embedded image processing system using High-Level Synthesis (HLS) technology, which automatically converts software to hardware. The hardware of pencil drawing style image conversion, which is one of NPRs, has been studied as a first step. To make HLS generate a well-pipelined hardware module with burst transfer, we have applied the memory access streaming technique for window-level processing. However, this technique has a weak point that lacks the upper and left side edges of the input image while the ideal performance can be achieved. This paper develops HLSoriented software for the pencil drawing style conversion, which can compensate for the shaved image without affecting the performance. The experimental result shows that our proposal can obtain the output image without any lack. In addition, the effects lead by our extension to the execution time, hardware resource, and power efficiency are little.