Architectural Analysis of a Baseline ISP Pipeline

Abstract

An ISP is an entity that performs various image-processing algorithms on a raw image from an image sensor. A number of functions are incorporated in an ISP, and they are combined together similarly but differently among ISP imple-menters. ISP functions are divided into pixel-based and frame-based ones, and are dedicated to one of three color domains in Bayer, RGB, or YCbCr. Although it is an essential component for a camera system, surprisingly, its architecture has not been analyzed in the context of standards. The purpose of this chapter is to remove ambiguity when analyzing an ISP architecture or designing a new ISP architecture. At the end of this chapter, a baseline ISP pipeline is presented, which is tentatively built to conform to the existing standards.