Design a Parallel Image Processor

You are asked to design an image-processing component. An image is represented as a 2D array of pixels, and the processor must apply one or more filters, such as grayscale conversion, blur, or other convolution-style transforms, to produce a new image. First, describe a straightforward single-processor implementation. Then explain how you would extend the design to run efficiently on multiple processors or threads. Discuss: - core data structures and interfaces - how work is partitioned - how to handle boundary pixels for neighborhood-based filters - how to avoid race conditions and incorrect shared-state updates - synchronization and scheduling choices - performance trade-offs, including memory locality and scalability - how you would test correctness and measure speedup