High Performance Image Processing: Comparative Analysis of FPGA and ASIC Hardware Accelerations

The study mainly focuses on Gaussian convolution for image smoothing and XOR based encryption for security, implemented on FPGA (ZCU104 using Vivado) and ASIC (Cadence Innovus at 45nm). The FPGA implementation leverages Look-Up Tables, Flip-Flops and DSP slices for rapid prototyping but results in higher power consumption (1.6 mW) and routing constraints. In contrary the ASIC implementation is developed developed through the RTL-to-GDSII flow achieves significantly lower power (16.33 μW), higher clock speeds (500 MHz vs. 150 MHz on FPGA) and compact area utilization. Performance evaluations highlight the advantages of ASIC in power efficiency and timing performance, whereas FPGA provides flexibility for iterative design. The findings provide insights into the tradeoffs between these two platforms guiding hardware designers in selecting optimal architectures for secure and efficient real time image processing applications.