Libcamera 0.7 was published today for this modern software library for image signal processors (ISPs) and embedded cameras under Linux. The standout change with libcamera 0.7 is initial plumbing for GPU acceleration in the software ISP "SoftISP" for delivering better performance than just CPU-based.

For scenarios of not having a hardware ISP working – or in cases like Intel of relying on closed-source user-space for the hardware ISP with their recent IPU IP – there is the SoftISP implementation. Libcamera 0.7 brings preliminary support for GPU acceleration as an alternative to the CPU usage. Today’s v0.7 release announcement notes:

"This release brings 158 commits with substantial development on the SoftISP components. This brings in GPU acceleration, allowing us to get higher throughput for cameras using this pipeline. Further development to improve the image quality is ongoing now that we can perform more processing in realtime."

In testing by Linaro on Qualcomm hardware, the GPU SoftISP was found to deliver 15x the performance as noted on the patches merged for libcamera landing this GPU support:

"In some cases the GPU can deliver 15x performance in Debayer with the CCM on, reference hardware Qualcomm RB5 with IMX512 sensor.

Given this large performance difference it makes sense to make GPUISP the default for the Software ISP."

Quite a nice release from the libcamera team.