Face detection system needs to meet a variety of constraints in embedded environments, but the high computational/control intensive features make the real-time implementation difficult. This paper presents a face detection system based on a dynamical coarse-grained partially reconfigurable platform called “REMUSII”. The cascade AdaBoost-based detection algorithm is divided into several non-consecutive sub-tasks. Mailbox
scheduling, configuration flow and data flow optimization methods improve the instruction-level and task-level parallelism. Experiment results show that this approach with a 200 MHz clock can process about 17 frames per second on 640£480 images. Its detection rate is over 95%. The system consumes about 194 mW, and its area is about 24 mm2 in TSMC’s 65 nm logic process.