Real Time ELA De-Interlacing with the Xtensa Reconfigurable Processor

This paper proposes optimization techniques to accelerate the enhanced edge-based line average (ELA) de-interlacing method. ELA is based on edge detection and directional interpolation as well as median filtering. The techniques are first based on low-level software optimizations to accelerate loops and arithmetic operations. Specialized hardware structures and corresponding new instructions are then defined for the Xtensa reconfigurable processor to accelerate ELA-specific operations. The combined software and hardware techniques result in a speed-up of 67x when compared to a base case. This accelerates the processing time from 25 times slower than real time to 2.7 times faster for a NTSC frame rate. A parallel processing version of ELA is also discussed