3dlabs Inc., Ltd.

Ziilabs Inc. Ltd.

Intel Corporation

Intellectual Pixels Limited

Creative Technology Corporation

Du Pont Pixel Systems Limited

Other

Zilabs Inc., Ltd.

David Robert Baldwin

Nicholas J N Murphy

Osman Kent

Karthik Vaidyanathan

Andrew Bigos

Neil F Trevett

Malcolm E Wilson

Philip R Laws

Andrew Peter Maund

Simon James Moore

Paul Cartwright

Paul Pontin

Steve Cooper

Thomas Frommann

Paul Parsons

An image display system with one or more client computers in selective communication with a visual server having image processing capabilities. The client computer generates image-modifying data corresponding to a generated image, and transmits the data to the visual server. The visual server receives the image-modifying data, generates a modified image based upon the image-modifying data, and transmits the modified image as compressed data to the client. The client decompresses the modified image data and displays the modified image. In the system, the visual server and client can provide a sequential display of modified frames on client to support animation with complex 3-dimensional graphics.

Image display system with visual server

An apparatus and method for sampling pattern generation in a ray tracing architecture. For example, one embodiment of a graphics processing apparatus comprises: a ray generation circuit to generate a ray stream from one or more image tiles; and a sample pattern generation circuit to generate samples for rays in the ray stream, the samples generated to exhibit at least some randomness across pixels of a given frame but be repeatable across multiple frames.

Method and apparatus for sampling pattern generation for a ray tracing architecture

A level of detail node may hold in a bounding volume hierarchy, an object identifier, a distance at which a transition occurs between levels of detail and a bias. When a level of detail node is encountered in the hierarchy, the distance value may be used to select a level of detail. Sometimes a different level of detail is loaded because the preferred level is not available. The different level may be marked in a register. Then for a subsequence frame, the correct level is used. A node bias may be used to override the level of detail selection is some cases.

Level of detail selection during ray tracing

Conflicts between the database-building and traversal phases are resolved by allowing the database bin size to be different from the display bin size. The database bin size is some multiple of the bin display bin size, and when there are multiple display bins in a database bin, each database bin is traversed multiple times for display, and the rasterizer discards primitives outside of the current display bin. This allows a trade off between memory bandwidth consumed for database building and bandwidth consumed for display, particularly when the display traversal is done multiple of times.

Multiple simultaneous bin sizes

An instruction cache and data cache used to virtualize the storage of global data and instructions used by graphics shaders. Present day hardware design stores the global data and instructions used by the shaders in a fixed amount of registers or writable control store (WCS). However, this traditional approach limits the size and the complexity of the shaders that can be supported. By virtualizing the storage of the global data and instructions, the amount of global or state memory available to the shader and the length of the shading programs are no longer constrained by the physical on-chip memory.

Shader with global and instruction caches

An efficient method and system for multi-sample antialiasing in graphics processing is described. Geometric edges as well as implicit edges of primitives in a bin are identified by iteratively rendering bins of pixels. Selective multi-sample antialiasing is applied to pixels that are touched by either a geometric edge or an implicit edge; pixels that are fully covered are not antialiased.

Multi-sample antialiasing optimization via edge tracking

Growing community of inventors

Weybridge, United Kingdom

David Robert Baldwin