The present invention discloses an acceleration method. The method comprises: determining a template size, an image size and a number M of temples for convolution calculation; determining the number Nof convolution units in an acceleration chain and the shortest length of the data loop based on the image size, the template size, the number of templates, and/or the computing capability of an acceleration apparatus; loading template coefficients into the convolution unit in the acceleration chain; loading multi-line image data into the FIFO buffer; starting the data stream, wherein the image data enters the image data input port of the first convolution unit from the FIFO buffer, each time a line of data is provided to the image data input port of the first convolution unit, the image dataof the previous line is pushed forward by one bit by the image data of the subsequent line, so that the data is calculated while flowing; and storing the result of each calculation in the specified storage location of the result storage.