A digital image signal multiprocessor (ISMP), a multiprocessor version of a previous real-time image signal processor (RISP) for gray-level image processing, is discussed. It is composed of a main controller and four processor elements (PEs), which are programmable 12-b digital signal processors. One PE has the processing speed of 50-million microinstructions-per-second. The ISMP has 200-million microinstructions-per-second performance using parallel processing with a round-robin method for local image processing. In the other operation mode, each PE processes the same image data with different feature-extracting programs. In addition, system processing power can be easily increased through a novel multichip processing mode. It has 30000 transistors on a 14.4-mm*13.7-mm chip using 1.2- mu m double-metal CMOS process technology. Its power dissipation is 2.9 W. >