What are the 'phases' in this 2D scaler filter I am pretty new to DSP and have been looking at how image scaling is done in hardware. I and came across a 2D scaler core for an FPGA here. I have read up a bit about polyphase filters, but am confused about what the &quot;16 phases&quot; referred to on page 3 with the following diagram are.

I have not come across this elsewhere and was hoping for some insight as to what is going on here.
My best guess is that they limit the available interpolation points to 16 discreet points in $x$ and the same for $y$, and so any fractional scaling where a sample point falls between $2$ of these $1/16^{\rm th}$ sampling points, will just use the closest point to it?
Any insight would be much appreciated.
My best guess is that they limit the available interpolation points to 16 discreet points in x and the same for y, and so any fractional scaling where a sample point falls between 2 of these 1/16th sampling points, will just use the closest point to it?

Yes, that's it.  Probably on the assumption that within 1/16 of a pixel shift, and with the further interpolation on the output, that filter will be good enough.