Fast prototyping of parallel-vision applications using functional skeletons |
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Authors: | Jocelyn Sérot Dominique Ginhac Roland Chapuis Jean-Pierre Dérutin |
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Affiliation: | (1) Laboratoire des Sciences et Matériaux pour l'Electronique, et d'Automatique, Université Blaise Pascal de Clermont Ferrand, UMR 6602 CNRS, 63177 Aubière Cedex France; e-mail: Jocelyn.Serot@lasmea.univ-bpclermont.fr , FR |
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Abstract: | We present a design methodology for real-time vision applications aiming at significantly reducing the design-implement-validate
cycle time on dedicated parallel platforms. This methodology is based upon the concept of algorithmic skeletons, i.e., higher
order program constructs encapsulating recurring forms of parallel computations and hiding their low-level implementation
details. Parallel programs are built by simply selecting and composing instances of skeletons chosen in a predefined basis.
A complete parallel programming environment was built to support the presented methodology. It comprises a library of vision-specific
skeletons and a chain of tools capable of turning an architecture-independent skeletal specification of an application into
an optimized, deadlock-free distributive executive for a wide range of parallel platforms. This skeleton basis was defined
after a careful analysis of a large corpus of existing parallel vision applications. The source program is a purely functional
specification of the algorithm in which the structure of a parallel application is expressed only as combination of a limited
number of skeletons. This specification is compiled down to a parametric process graph, which is subsequently mapped onto
the actual physical topology using a third-party CAD software. It can also be executed on any sequential platform to check
the correctness of the parallel algorithm. The applicability of the proposed methodology and associated tools has been demonstrated
by parallelizing several realistic real-time vision applications both on a multi-processor platform and a network of workstations.
It is here illustrated with a complete road-tracking algorithm based upon white-line detection. This experiment showed a dramatic
reduction in development times (hence the term fast prototyping), while keeping performances on par with those obtained with
the handcrafted parallel version.
Received: 22 July 1999 / Accepted: 9 November 2000 |
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Keywords: | : Parallelism – Computer vision – Fast prototyping – Skeleton – Functional programming – CAML – Road following |
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