JP2011095807A - Image processing apparatus and image processing method - Google Patents

Abstract

<P>PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To provide an image processing apparatus and method, processing input image data without deteriorating the throughput of a device. <P>SOLUTION: The image processing apparatus 20 is configured to perform image processing, in which the dependency of the image processing to input image data exists in a prescribed direction, in parallel by starting a plurality of threads, and provided with: a device 30 capable of executing processing in parallel by starting the plurality of threads; an intermediate buffer 32 storing the result of image processing performed by the device 30; and a host H for controlling the data quantity of the input image data for which image processing is performed by the device 30. The host H is configured to create division image data D by dividing the input image data so that the boundary section B of division appears in a direction perpendicular to a direction in which the dependency of the image processing exists, to supply division image data D to the device 30, and to make the intermediate buffer 32 store the processing result corresponding to the boundary section B of the division among the processing results of the image processing performed by the device 30. <P>COPYRIGHT: (C)2011,JPO&amp;INPIT

Description

  The present invention relates to an image processing apparatus and an image processing method.

  A GPU (Graphics Processing Unit) is widely used as a device attached in a computer. A GPU is originally intended for graphics processing, but recently, a development environment for use in general-purpose computation has been provided by a manufacturer. As described above, a technology that uses a GPU for general-purpose computation is known as a general purpose computing on GPU (GPGPU). Currently, GPGPU is used in fields such as computational physics, video and image processing, database management, and biotechnology.

  The GPU can execute floating point operations in parallel and at a higher speed than a CPU (Central Processing Unit) which is a general-purpose processing device. In other words, if the GPU is used for repeating the same operation in parallel with a large amount of data, the GPU can execute processing very efficiently and at a higher speed than the CPU.

JP 2003-198818 A

  By the way, when processing with a processing dependency in a certain direction is performed using a GPU, it is possible to perform processing on all input areas in parallel for the input image data that has been input due to restrictions such as memory capacity. There are cases where it is not possible. In that case, because the processing dependency relationship is in a certain direction, the input image data is divided into a plurality along the direction orthogonal to the certain dependency direction, and the divided input image data is It is conceivable to adopt a method in which processing is performed in order to cope with restrictions such as memory capacity. However, in this case, since the number of threads activated simultaneously decreases, the throughput in processing by the GPU decreases.

  Some aspects of the present invention are to provide an image processing apparatus and an image processing method capable of processing input image data without reducing the throughput of the device.

  In order to solve the above-described problems, the image processing apparatus of the present invention is an image that can process the image processing in which the dependency of the image processing on the input image data exists in a predetermined direction in parallel by activating a plurality of threads. A processing apparatus that activates a plurality of threads and can execute processing in the threads in parallel, an intermediate buffer that can store a result of image processing by the device, and image processing in the device A host that controls the amount of input image data to be generated, and the host divides the input image data so that a boundary portion of the division appears in a direction orthogonal to the direction in which the dependency of image processing exists A process for creating divided image data is performed, and the divided image data is supplied to the device by the process. The process is executed in parallel by activating a plurality of threads along a direction orthogonal to the direction in which the image processing dependency exists. The processing result corresponding to the boundary portion is stored in the intermediate buffer.

  In such a configuration, the device is supplied with the divided image data that is divided so that the boundary portion of the division appears in a direction orthogonal to the direction in which the image processing dependency exists, and the device receives this divided image data. On the other hand, a plurality of threads can be activated to execute processing in parallel. For this reason, even if the input image data cannot be processed in parallel for the entire input area due to restrictions such as memory capacity, it is orthogonal to the direction in which the dependency of image processing exists. It is possible to activate more threads (increase threads) along the direction to be performed. As a result, it is possible to improve the throughput in the processing of the device as compared with the case where the input image data is divided along a direction orthogonal to a certain direction having a dependency relationship. In addition, since the number of threads that can be activated in parallel can be increased, it is possible to take advantage of the characteristic of the device that processing in threads can be executed in parallel.

  According to another aspect of the present invention, in the above-described invention, the image processing in which the dependency relationship exists in a predetermined direction is preferably a smoothing process.

  When configured in this way, smoothing in which a processing dependency exists in a predetermined direction with respect to divided image data divided so that a boundary portion of the division appears in a direction orthogonal to a direction in which there is a dependency of image processing. Processing is done. Therefore, compared to the case where the input image data is divided and the smoothing process is executed along the direction orthogonal to the fixed direction having the dependency, the smoothing process of the entire input image data can be performed at high speed. Become.

  Further, according to another aspect of the present invention, in the above-described invention, the device is provided with an intermediate buffer, and the host receives information on the storage capacity of the intermediate buffer from the device, and is based on the information on the storage capacity. Thus, it is preferable to execute processing for creating divided image data.

  When configured in this manner, the data size of the divided image data can be made appropriate.

  In another invention, in addition to the above-described invention, the host is further provided with a memory control unit, and the memory control unit receives the divided image data by controlling the transmission of the input image data to the device. It is preferable to execute the process to create.

  When configured in this way, it is possible to create divided image data in the intermediate buffer on the device side by controlling the transmission of the input image data to the device by the memory control unit. That is, since it is not necessary to create divided image data on the host side, it is not necessary to consume memory on the host side.

  Furthermore, in another invention, in addition to the above-described invention, it is preferable that the host creates divided image data from the input image data, and sends the created divided image data to the device.

  In such a configuration, although processing for creating divided image data is required, when sending data from the host side, the divided image data can be sent in the order of consecutive addresses. Therefore, it is possible to increase the speed of data transmission.

  In addition, an image processing method according to another aspect of another invention is an image in which the image processing dependency on the input image data exists in a predetermined direction and can be processed in parallel by activating a plurality of threads. A processing method, in which a plurality of threads are started and a device capable of executing processing in the threads in parallel, an intermediate buffer capable of storing a result of image processing by the device, and image processing in the device And a host that controls the amount of input image data to be generated, and the divided image data obtained by dividing the input image data so that a boundary portion of the division appears in a direction orthogonal to the direction in which the dependency of image processing exists. The processing to be created is executed by the host, and the divided image data is supplied to the device by the processing, and the image corresponding to the divided image data in the device In parallel with the direction perpendicular to the direction in which the image processing dependency exists, multiple threads are activated and executed in parallel. It is preferable to store the corresponding processing result in the intermediate buffer.

  In such a configuration, the device is supplied with the divided image data that is divided so that the boundary portion of the division appears in a direction orthogonal to the direction in which the image processing dependency exists, and the device receives this divided image data. On the other hand, a plurality of threads can be activated to execute processing in parallel. For this reason, even if the input image data cannot be processed in parallel for the entire input area due to restrictions such as memory capacity, it is orthogonal to the direction in which the dependency of image processing exists. It is possible to activate more threads (increase threads) along the direction to be performed. As a result, it is possible to improve the throughput in the processing of the device as compared with the case where the input image data is divided along a direction orthogonal to a certain direction having a dependency relationship. In addition, since the number of threads that can be activated in parallel can be increased, it is possible to take advantage of the characteristic of the device that processing in threads can be executed in parallel.

1 is a schematic diagram illustrating a configuration of a printing apparatus and a computer according to the present invention. It is a block diagram which shows the structural example of GPU in the computer shown in FIG. FIG. 2 is a diagram illustrating a schematic configuration of the printer of FIG. 1. It is a figure which shows the direction with a process dependency, and the parallel direction of a thread | sled. It is a figure which shows the image of the division | segmentation of image data, and the image of a process. It is a figure which shows the image of the conventional image data division | segmentation, and the image of a process.

  Hereinafter, a printing apparatus 10 including an image processing apparatus according to an embodiment of the present invention will be described with reference to FIGS. 1 to 6. Here, the printing apparatus 10 refers to a combination of the computer 20 and the inkjet printer 40. However, if the printer has all the functions described in the following description, the printer may be used as the printing apparatus 10. good. The image processing apparatus corresponds to the computer 20 in the present embodiment.

<Schematic configuration of printing device>
FIG. 1 is a diagram illustrating a schematic configuration of the printing apparatus 10. As shown in FIG. 1, the printing apparatus 10 includes a computer 20 and a printer 40.

  Among these, the computer 20 includes a CPU (Central Processing Unit) 21, a main memory 22, an HDD (Hard Disk Drive) 23, an interface 24, a bus 25, a device 30, and the like.

  Among these, the CPU 21 is a part that reads various programs and various data from a ROM (Read Only Memory), an HDD 23, and the like (not shown) and executes various calculations. Further, after the various programs and various data are read out, the respective configurations of the computer 20 cooperate to realize a functional configuration corresponding to the memory control unit 21a in the CPU 21.

  The memory control unit 21a performs control when the image data stored in the supply data buffer 22a of the main memory 22 (this image data corresponds to input image data in the claims) is sent to the device 30 side. Do.

  The main memory 22 is an external memory for storing various data and programs such as a DRAM. In the main memory 22, for example, a supply data buffer 22a that stores RGB color system image data created by an application program 23a described later, and an intermediate data buffer 22b that stores data after processing by a GPU 31 described later. And have.

  In response to a request from the CPU 21, the HDD 23 can read data or a program recorded on the hard disk as a recording medium, and can record predetermined data generated as a result of the arithmetic processing of the CPU 21 on the hard disk described above. It is said. The interface 24 is a circuit for outputting image data to the printer 40 and appropriately converting and inputting a representation format of signals output from the external input device and the external storage device. The bus 25 is a signal transmission path for connecting the CPU 21, the main memory 22, the HDD 23, the device 30, and the like.

  The HDD 23 is loaded with an application program 23a, a video driver program 23b, and a printer driver program 23c, which operate under a predetermined operating system (OS).

  Here, the printer driver program 23c includes a resolution conversion module, a color conversion module, a color conversion table, a halftone module, a recording rate table, a print data generation module, a transmission module, and the like as constituent elements (all modules). (Not shown).

  Among these, the resolution conversion module appropriately converts the resolution of the RGB color system image data according to the printing resolution of the printer 40. The color conversion module converts the image data expressed by the RGB (Red, Green, Blue) color system into image data of the CMYK (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, Black) color system by referring to the color conversion table. Perform the conversion process. The halftone module performs a smoothing process that smoothes the fluctuation of the pixel value at the edge portion of the image, for example, by averaging the pixel values of adjacent pixels. After that, the halftone module uses, for example, dither processing to display image data in which one pixel is expressed with 256 gradations in the CMYK color system by referring to the recording rate table and using three types of dots, large, medium, and small. Convert to bitmap data consisting of Note that the smoothing process may be executed by another module such as a color conversion module.

  The print data generation module generates print data including raster data indicating the dot recording state during each main scan and data indicating the sub-scan feed amount from the bitmap data output from the halftone module. The transmission module transmits the print data generated by the print data generation module to the printer 40.

  Although the device 30 is also referred to as a graphics board, the device 30 includes a GPU (Graphics Processing Unit) 31 and a graphics memory 32 as an example of an intermediate buffer. The GPU 31 performs processing as described later on the data sent from the CPU 22 and outputs it again to the CPU 21 side. The graphics memory 32 stores data transmitted from the CPU 21 side.

  As shown in FIG. 1, the GPU 31 functionally includes a thread control unit 31a and a memory command unit 31b. As will be described later, the thread control unit 31a automatically divides processing for processing data into units of threads, and controls assignment of threads to a streaming processor 316 described later. Further, as will be described later, the memory command unit 31b stores the calculation result at the boundary of the divided image data D in the graphics memory 32, and in the next calculation of the divided image data D, the thread control unit 31a. To pass to.

  In the following description, the device 30 including the CPU 21, the main memory 22, and the HDD 23 is referred to as a host H.

<GPU configuration example>
FIG. 2 is a block diagram illustrating a configuration example of the GPU 31. Here, GeForce (registered trademark) 8800GTX manufactured by NVIDIA will be described as an example. This GPU 31 corresponds to an integrated development environment in C language called CUDA (Compute Unified Device Architecture; registered trademark). A conventional GPU has a shader having two functions, a vertex shader and a pixel shader, but the GPU 31 adopts a design concept called an integrated shader in which all shaders have the same function. Note that the integrated shader is implemented in a streaming processor 316 described later.

In this GPU 31, GPGPU (General
It is possible to execute a technology known as “Purpose computing on GPU” that applies the computing resources of the GPU 31 for purposes other than image processing.

  This GPU 31 has eight texture processor clusters (TPC) 310. Each texture processor cluster 310 includes two streaming multiprocessors (SM) 311, a constant cache 312 and a texture cache 313. Each of the streaming multiprocessors 311 includes a shared memory 314, an instruction unit 315, and eight streaming processors (SP) 316. In this configuration, the streaming processor 316 becomes an individual calculation unit, and 8 × 2 × 8 = 128 processes can be executed in parallel. Here, a configuration example of a specific product that is commercially available is shown, but the basic configuration, that is, the configuration in which a plurality of calculation units process in parallel is the same for any GPU.

  Here, when a certain process (in this embodiment, smoothing of image data as described later) is executed by the GPU 31, the thread control unit 31a of the GPU 31 automatically divides the process into units of threads. Incidentally, the number of divided threads is usually larger than the number of streaming processors 316. On the other hand, since one streaming multiprocessor 311 has eight streaming processors 316, the number of threads that can be physically processed in parallel by one streaming multiprocessor 311 is eight. Therefore, for example, a very large number of threads such as thousands to tens of thousands are configured to be allocated to the respective streaming processors 316 in a time division manner.

<Other configuration (schematic printer configuration)>
Next, a schematic configuration of the printer 40 will be described. FIG. 3 is a diagram illustrating a schematic configuration of the printer 40. The printer 40 includes a paper feed mechanism 50, an ink supply mechanism 60, a line head 70, and a printer control unit 80.

  The paper feed mechanism 50 includes a paper feed motor (PF motor) 51 and a paper feed roller 52 to which the driving force from the paper feed motor 51 is transmitted, and supplies a print medium P such as print paper. It can be conveyed from the part toward the paper discharge side. The ink supply mechanism 60 includes a cartridge holder 61, an ink cartridge 62, and an ink supply path 63. An ink cartridge 62 is detachably attached to the cartridge holder 61. 3 has a so-called off-carriage type configuration, it may be an on-carriage type printer. An ink supply path 63 is provided between the ink cartridge 62 and the line head 70 so that ink can be supplied from the ink cartridge 62 to the line head 70.

  Further, the line head 70 has a width dimension wider than that of the print medium P. The line head 70 is arranged such that a plurality of short heads (not shown) are arranged along the main scanning direction while alternately moving back and forth in the sub scanning direction.

  The printer control unit 80 includes a CPU (not shown), a memory (ROM, RAM, nonvolatile memory, etc.), an ASIC (Application Specific Integrated Circuit), a bus, a timer, an interface, and the like. The printer control unit 80 receives signals from various sensors, and based on the signals from the sensors, the printer control unit 80 feeds paper based on print data transmitted from the computer 20 side. It controls the motors such as the motor 51 and the drive of the line head 70 and the like.

<Operation in the present embodiment>
An example of performing image processing in the computer 20 having the above configuration will be described below.

  When image processing is performed in accordance with an instruction from the CPU 21, among such image processing, processing such as smoothing processing has processing dependency in a predetermined direction as shown in FIG. 4 in the data array. For example, in FIG. 4, data (0,0) to (n, 0), (0,1) to (n, 1),. . Processing dependencies exist in (0, m) to (n, m).

  When processing such data (image data in the present embodiment) having processing dependency in a predetermined direction, the memory control unit 21a determines the storage capacity of the graphics memory 32 of the GPU 31. The amount of data to be sent to the GPU 31 is determined with reference to the information. Then, from the determined data amount and the number of data (number of pixels) in the direction orthogonal to the direction having the dependency (vertical direction in FIG. 4), the number of data (number of pixels) in the direction having the dependency is obtained. It is determined. The entire image data is in a state of being divided into several divided image data D as shown in FIG.

  The division into the divided image data D may be actually performed on the host H side, and the divided image data D after the division may be stored in the main memory 22 again. In addition, apparently such division into divided image data D may be realized by controlling the transmission of image data in the memory control unit 21a. When the apparent division is realized by controlling the transmission of the image data in the memory control unit 21a, the memory control unit 21a has the first head address in the dependency direction and the last in the dependency direction regarding the data transmission. This can be done by designating the number of data up to the address and executing it for all directions orthogonal to the direction of dependence.

  Further, the divided image data may be created in the graphics memory 32 by a command on the GPU 31 side, without using the memory control unit 21a functionally realized by the CPU 21a. In this case, when the CPU 21 instructs the GPU 31 to perform predetermined image processing such as smoothing processing, the memory command unit 31 b of the GPU 31 moves from the supply data buffer 22 a of the main memory 22 to a predetermined area of the graphics memory 32. The divided image data D is read and created. In creating the divided image data D in a predetermined area of the graphics memory 32, the first head address in the dependency direction and the number of data between the last address in the dependency direction are designated. This is realized by executing it for all the directions orthogonal to the direction having the dependency direction.

  The graphics memory 32 of the GPU 31 stores processing data that is divided image data D sent from the host H for each unit called a grid. Thereafter, for this processing data, the thread control unit 31a automatically divides the processing for the processing data into units of threads, and controls the assignment of threads to a streaming processor 316 described later. Then, the streaming processor 316 sequentially executes the processing of each thread. The processing here has a processing dependency in a predetermined direction as shown in FIG. 5 as in the smoothing processing. For example, in the smoothing process, a thread for taking an average value between a plurality of pixels is executed, for example, taking an average of pixel values of adjacent pixels while moving along a predetermined direction.

  Thousands to tens of thousands of threads corresponding to such processing can be apparently executed simultaneously under the control of the thread control unit 31a.

  Then, when the processing of all threads corresponding to the divided image data D is completed, the memory command unit 31b instructs the graphics memory 32 to hold the processing result corresponding to the boundary portion B. The processing result is stored in the graphics memory 32 until the processing of all threads corresponding to the divided image data D is completed. When all the threads corresponding to the divided image data D have been processed, the processing result is transferred to the host H side according to a command from the memory command unit 31b. Subsequently, processing data for the next divided image data D is sent from the host H and stored in the graphics memory 32.

  In addition, the thread control unit 31a automatically divides the processing for the next processing data into units of threads, and controls the allocation of threads to a streaming processor 316 described later. Here, the memory command unit 31b reads the calculation result at the boundary of the divided divided image data D in the immediately preceding process from the graphics memory 32, and transfers it to the thread control unit 31a. Then, the thread control unit 31a reflects the passed calculation result on the first thread in the time division. Therefore, the processing dependency in the predetermined direction is not impaired between the processing data of the divided image data D processed immediately before and the processing data of the divided image data D currently processed.

  Thereafter, such processing is repeated until the processing for all the divided image data D is completed.

<Effect>
According to the printing apparatus 10 configured as described above, the divided image data D that is divided so that the boundary portion B appears in the direction orthogonal to the direction in which the image processing dependency exists in the device 30 (GPU 31). Is supplied. In the device 30 (GPU 31), a plurality of threads can be activated for the divided image data D to execute processing in parallel. Therefore, even if the input image data cannot be processed in parallel for the entire area due to restrictions such as the memory capacity of the graphics memory 32 of the GPU 31, the dependency of the image processing More threads can be activated along a direction orthogonal to the direction in which the is present.

  Thereby, it is possible to improve the throughput in the processing of the device 30 (GPU 31) as compared to the case where the input image data is divided along a direction orthogonal to the certain direction having the dependency. In addition, since it is possible to increase the number of threads that can be activated in parallel, it is possible to take advantage of the characteristics of the device 30 (GPU 31) that processing in threads can be executed in parallel.

  In the present embodiment, an example of image processing in which the dependency relationship exists in a predetermined direction is smoothing processing. For this reason, the divided image data D that has been divided so that the boundary portion of the division appears in a direction orthogonal to the direction in which the image processing dependency exists, is subjected to smoothing processing that has a processing dependency in a predetermined direction. The This makes it possible to perform smoothing processing on the entire input image data at a higher speed than when performing smoothing processing by dividing the input image data along a direction orthogonal to a certain fixed direction. It becomes.

  Here, FIG. 6 shows an example of conventional image processing such as smoothing processing. In the image processing shown in FIG. 6, in order not to impair the processing dependency in a predetermined direction, the direction perpendicular to the direction in which the processing dependency exists (parallel direction of threads; vertical direction in FIG. 6) ) Is divided into image data. In this case, the direction in which the processing dependency exists is the horizontal direction in FIG. 6, so that the number of threads that can be activated is significantly smaller than that in FIG. 5. As a result, it is impossible to make full use of the characteristic of the GPU 31 that parallel processing can be performed at high speed.

  On the other hand, as apparent from FIG. 5, the image processing in the present embodiment can secure a very large number of threads that can be activated, and can perform parallel processing at high speed. It is possible to make full use of the characteristics.

  Further, in the present embodiment, the host H (memory control unit 21a) receives information related to the storage capacity of the graphics memory 32 from the device 30, and creates divided image data D based on the information related to the storage capacity. Is running. For this reason, the data size of the divided image data D can be made appropriate.

  In the present embodiment, the CPU 21 of the host H is functionally realized with a memory control unit 21a. The memory control unit 21a controls the divided image by controlling the transmission of input image data to the device 30. A process of creating data D is executed. Therefore, the divided image data D can be created in the graphics memory 32 on the device 30 side. In other words, since it is not necessary to create the divided image data D on the host H side, it is not necessary to consume the main memory 22 on the host H side.

  The host H may create the divided image data D from the input image data and send the created divided image data D to the device 30. In this case, the process of creating the divided image data D is required, but when the divided image data D is sent from the host H side, the divided image data D can be sent in the order of consecutive addresses. As a result, data transmission can be speeded up.

  Further, in the printing apparatus 10 according to the present embodiment, the speed of image processing in the device 30 (GPU 31) can be increased, so that the throughput up to the printing of the printer 40 can be improved. In particular, in the printer 40 including the line head 70, printing is performed at high speed. However, since image processing in the device 30 (GPU 31) can be accelerated, the printer 40 performs image processing at the time of printing. The waiting time can be shortened, or no waiting time can be generated.

<Modification>
Although one embodiment of the present invention has been described above, the present invention can be variously modified in addition to this. This will be described below.

  In the above-described embodiment, the smoothing process is described as the process in which the dependency relationship exists in the predetermined direction. However, the process in which such a dependency relationship exists in a predetermined direction is not limited to the smoothing process, and may be applied to various processes. For example, in various types of processing in which a dependency relationship exists in a plane, a restriction is imposed so that the dependency relationship is generated only in a certain direction, and the present invention may be applied to various processing in which such a limitation is applied. good. Such processing includes, for example, error diffusion processing, various filter processing such as Laplacian filter processing, bilinear interpolation, nearest neighbor interpolation, and the like.

  In the above-described embodiment, the case where the function of the image processing apparatus is realized in the computer 20 constituting the printing apparatus 10 is described. However, the function of this image processing apparatus may be realized in a part other than the computer 20. For example, when the printer 40 is configured to be connectable to the device 30, the image processing apparatus is configured by the printer control unit 80 and the device 30. When the control unit of the printer 40 includes a device, an image processing apparatus is configured by the control unit of the printer 40.

  In the above-described embodiment, the computer 20 including one host H and one device 30 is described. However, the number of hosts H and devices 30 is not limited to one, and a plurality of hosts H and devices 30 may exist. In particular, when there are a plurality of devices 30, it is possible to further increase the processing speed in image processing.

  In the above-described embodiment, the device 30 is not limited to a specific model, and may be any device that can execute a very large number of threads in parallel, such as thousands to tens of thousands. Any device 30 may be used.

  The image processing apparatus and the image processing method described above can be realized by installing a program for realizing the above-described operation in the computer 20.

  In the above-described embodiment, the graphics memory 32 is described as an example of the intermediate buffer. However, at least one of the constant cache 312, the texture cache 313, and the shared memory 314 may be used as an intermediate buffer. Further, a memory existing outside the device 30 may be used as an intermediate buffer.

  In the above-described embodiment, the case where image data is used as the data to be processed has been described. However, the data to be processed is only when image data is converted into print data. It can also be used in computational physics, video and image processing, database management, biotechnology, etc.

  In the above-described embodiment, the ink jet printer 40 is described as an example. However, the liquid ejecting apparatus is not limited to the ink jet printer 40. For example, the present invention can be applied to a gel jet printer. For example, the present invention is applied to a liquid ejecting apparatus that ejects a liquid material in which functional material particles are dispersed, a granular material such as a gel, or the like. The invention can be applied. Further, the printer 40 in the above-described embodiment may be a part of a complex device such as a configuration having a function (scanner function, copy function, etc.) other than the printer function.

  Furthermore, as a printer, it is of course possible to apply the present invention to methods other than the ink jet method (laser method, dot impact method, etc.).

DESCRIPTION OF SYMBOLS 10 ... Printing device, 20 ... Computer, 21 ... CPU, 21a ... Memory control part, 22 ... Main memory, 22a ... Supply data buffer, 22b ... Intermediate data buffer, 23 ... HDD, 23c ... Printer driver program, 30 ... Device, 31 ... GPU, 32 ... Graphics memory (corresponding to an example of an intermediate buffer), 40 ... Printer, 70 ... Line head, 80 ... Printer control unit, 310 ... Texture processor cluster, 311 ... Streaming multiprocessor, 316 ... Streaming processor, B: boundary portion, D: divided image data, H: host, P: print medium

Claims (6)

An image processing apparatus capable of processing a plurality of threads in parallel to perform the image processing in which the dependency of image processing on input image data exists in a predetermined direction,
A device capable of activating a plurality of the threads and executing the processes in the threads in parallel;
An intermediate buffer capable of storing the result of image processing by the device;
A host for controlling the amount of input image data to be processed by the device;
Comprising
The host performs a process of creating divided image data obtained by dividing the input image data so that a boundary portion of the division appears in a direction orthogonal to a direction in which the image processing dependency exists,
Through the processing, the divided image data is supplied to the device,
The device causes image processing on the divided image data to be executed in parallel by activating a plurality of threads along a direction orthogonal to a direction in which the dependency relationship of the image processing exists.
Further, the device stores, in the intermediate buffer, a processing result corresponding to the boundary portion of the division among the processing results subjected to image processing by the device.
An image processing apparatus. The image processing apparatus according to claim 1,
The image processing in which the dependency relationship exists in a predetermined direction is a smoothing processing.
An image processing apparatus. The image processing apparatus according to claim 1 or 2,
The device is provided with the intermediate buffer,
The host receives information on the storage capacity of the intermediate buffer from the device, and executes processing for creating the divided image data based on the information on the storage capacity;
An image processing apparatus. The image processing apparatus according to claim 3,
The host is provided with a memory control unit,
The memory control unit executes processing for creating the divided image data by controlling transmission of the input image data to the device.
An image processing apparatus. The image processing apparatus according to claim 3,
The host creates the divided image data from the input image data, and sends the created divided image data to the device.
An image processing apparatus. An image processing method capable of processing a plurality of threads in parallel and performing the image processing in which the dependency of image processing on input image data exists in a predetermined direction,
A device capable of activating a plurality of the threads and executing the processes in the threads in parallel;
An intermediate buffer capable of storing the result of image processing by the device;
A host for controlling the amount of input image data to be processed by the device;
Use
Causing the host to execute a process of creating divided image data obtained by dividing the input image data so that a boundary portion of the division appears in a direction orthogonal to a direction in which the image processing dependency exists;
Through the processing, the divided image data is supplied to the device,
The image processing on the divided image data in the device is executed in parallel by activating a plurality of threads along a direction orthogonal to the direction in which the dependency relationship of the image processing exists.
Furthermore, the processing result corresponding to the boundary part of the division among the processing results image-processed by the device is stored in the intermediate buffer.
An image processing method.

Images