iVisual: An Intelligent Visual Sensor SoC With 2790 fps CMOS Image Sensor and 205 GOPS/W Vision Processor

Abstract

iVisual, an intelligent visual sensor SoC integrating 2790 fps CMOS image sensor and 76.8 GOPS, 374 mW vision processor, is implemented on a 7.5 mm × 9.4 mm die in a UMC 0.18 mum CMOS Image Sensor process. Light-in, answer-out SoC architecture is adopted to avoid possible privacy problems. A feature processor is designed to eliminate the dataflow mismatch between processor array and scalar processor to increase 36% of average throughput. To increase hardware utilization, an inter-processor synchronization scheme is adopted to increase 23% of average throughput. Memory access is reduced by 94% to save 726 mW of power consumption. A bitplane-based single port memory structure is adopted to reduce SRAM area. The 205 GOPS/W power efficiency and 1.16 GOPS/mm <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">2</sup> area efficiency are therefore achieved by use of the proposed techniques.