Pixel Visual Core: Google’s first custom-designed co-processor

Re:Pixel Visual Core: Google’s first custom-designed co-proc... by abainbridge on Wednesday October 18, 2017 @03:48AM (#15497564)

Yeah, agreed. I screen captured the unprocessed image from the webpage (which has been jpeg'd and therefore lost lots of the shadow detail). I loaded it into a paint package and did a simple (and computationally cheap) histogram adjustment. IMO, the results were at least as good as theirs. And these are the results they cherry picked. Not impressive.

I guess most people won't load the image into a paint package to fix it, so their aim is just to automatically do a job nearly as good as a trivial change a human would make. Still, I was hoping for more.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Pixel Visual Core: Google’s first custom-designed co-proc... by sdrothrock on Wednesday October 18, 2017 @05:49AM (#15497935)

I don't think the Pixel Visual Core is supposed to do anything new or revolutionary -- the primary purpose is to do these old things FASTER for the user.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Pixel Visual Core: Google’s first custom-designed co-proc... by abainbridge on Wednesday October 18, 2017 @06:45AM (#15498079)

But a simple histogram stretch can be done with very little processing power by modern standards. 50 ms on one core of the application processor would be enough.

I think they just chose bad examples. The results from this Google Research blog post are much much more impressive:

https://research.googleblog.com/2017/04/experimental-nightti...

I wish my smartphone could do _that_ automatically.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Pixel Visual Core: Google’s first custom-designed co-proc... by dharma1 on Wednesday October 18, 2017 @07:56AM (#15498330)

You end up with a lot more noise with simple histogram adjustment from a single image, plus the dynamic compression to a final 8bit image won't look as good for many use cases.

Exposure fusion from multiple images has much higher usable dynamic range and lower noise.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Pixel Visual Core: Google’s first custom-designed co-proc... by phs318u on Wednesday October 18, 2017 @07:06AM (#15498142)

Thanks for that. That was amazing.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Pixel Visual Core: Google’s first custom-designed co-proc... by glenneroo on Wednesday October 18, 2017 @09:04AM (#15498781)

Faster and supposedly uses much less power.

> Using Pixel Visual Core, HDR+ can run 5x faster and at less than one-tenth the energy than running on the application processor (AP).

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Pixel Visual Core: Google’s first custom-designed co-proc... by em3rgent0rdr on Wednesday October 18, 2017 @09:39AM (#15499015)

Not just faster but more energy efficient I presume. That's especially important when taking long videos.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Pixel Visual Core: Google’s first custom-designed co-proc... by baldfat on Wednesday October 18, 2017 @07:24AM (#15498209)

BUT it is HDR aka they take multiple of photos and use the under exposed for the sky and the more exposed for the faces. So they are doing MUCH more then a histogram.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Pixel Visual Core: Google’s first custom-designed co-proc... by Twirrim on Wednesday October 18, 2017 @09:37AM (#15498987)

Sure, but why even do that if a histogram stretch achieves what is effectively the same end result?

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Pixel Visual Core: Google’s first custom-designed co-proc... by baldfat on Wednesday October 18, 2017 @11:14AM (#15499771)

Because in the long run HDR will be better for people who are horrible picture takers.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Pixel Visual Core: Google’s first custom-designed co-proc... by buttersb on Wednesday October 18, 2017 @11:14AM (#15499766)

In your one example sure. But isn't that sort of short sighted?

[ Parent | on HN ]