This paper describes the design of a low-cost, low-power smart imaging core that can be embedded in cameras. The core integrates an ARM 9 processor, a camera interface and two specific hardware blocks for image processing: a smart imaging coprocessor and an enhanced motion estimator. Both coprocessors have been designed using high-level synthesis tools taking the C programming language as a starting point. The resulting RTL code of each coprocessor has been synthesized and verified on an FPGA

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... ard. Two automotive and two mobile smart imaging applications are mapped onto the resulting smart imaging core. This mapping process of the original C++ applications onto the smart imaging core is also presented in this paper.