Focal-plane processing architectures for real-time hyperspectral image processing

Real-time image processing requires high computational and I/O throughputs obtained by use of optoelectronic system solutions. A novel architecture th at uses focal-plane optoelectronic-area I/O with a fine-grain, low-memory, single-instruction-multiple-data (SIMD) processor array is presented as an efficient computational solution for real-time hyperspectral image processi ng. The architecture is evaluated by use of realistic workloads to determin e data throughputs, processing demands, and storage requirements. We show t hat traditional store-and-process system performance is inadequate for this application domain, whereas the focal-plane SIMD architecture is capable o f supporting real-time performances with sustained operation throughputs of 500-1500 gigaoperations/s. The focal-plane architecture exploits the direc t coupling between sensor and parallel-processor arrays to alleviate data-b andwidth requirements, allowing computation to be performed in a stream-par allel computation model, while data arrive from the sensors. (C) 2000 Optic al Society of America.