An object-oriented software framework for execution of real-time, parallel algorithms

Abstract

Infrared (IR) scene projection systems that employ microresisters can have significant, non-uniform spatial variation in their output. This non-uniformity causes unwanted artifacts in the projected scene sufficient to prevent accurate sensor testing. To compensate for this nonuniformity, high-speed digital hardware is used to apply non-uniformity correction (NUC) to the images. However, the hardware is very costly and must be custom-built for each projector. With high performance computers, NUC can be implemented in software a t a fraction of the hardware cost while still meeting the real-time requirements. The purpose of this paper is to present object-oriented frameworks, implemented in C++, for executing NUC algorithms in parallel in real-time. The frameworks provide abstractions for multi-threading, parallel processing, shared memory, frame-based scheduling, variable interrupt sources, and scheduling disciplines. Results for NUC algorithms on an 8-processor SGI Onyx-2 will also be presented.