Nvidia Corporation

Nvidia U.S. Investment Company

Emmett Michael Kilgariff

Ziyad Sami Hakura

Rui Manuel Bastos

Dale L Kirkland

Steven E Molnar

Karim Abdalla

Sean Jeffrey Treichler

Johnny S Rhoades

Patrick Richard Brown

Rouslan Lyubomirov Dimitrov

Christian Rouet

Walter E Donovan

Eric Brian Lum

Michael C Shebanow

Joel James McCormack

Henry Packard Moreton

Alexander Lev Minkin

James C Bowman

Christian Amsinck

Cynthia Ann Edgeworth Allison

John Erik Lindholm

John Stephen Montrym

Robert Ohannessian

Jerome Francis Duluk, Jr

David Brian Glasco

Cass Watson Everitt

Yury Y Uralsky

Steven James Heinrich

Michael J M Toksvig

Sachin Satish Idgunji

David Kirk McAllister

John M Danskin

Tyson J Bergland

Timothy John Purcell

Gary M Tarolli

Ross Cunniff

Dane Mrazek

Lei Yang

Brett Coon

Brian Keith Cabral

Lacky V Shah

Jeffrey A Bolz

David B Kirk

Simon S Moy

Douglas A Voorhies

James D Kelly

Peter B Holmqvist

Rohit Kumar Gupta

Franklin C Crow

Justin S Legakis

Roger L Allen

Brian Kelleher

Paul S Heckbert

Walter Robert Steiner

Craig Michael Wittenbrink

Gregory Scott Palmer

David Wyatt

Jack H Choquette

Shirish C Gadre

James Michael O'Connor

John Matthew Burgess

Patrick Rene Marchand

Gerrit Ary Slavenburg

Abraham Benjamin De Waal

Olivier Giroux

Wishwesh Anil Gandhi

Gregory Muthler

Eric T Anderson

Philip Browning Johnson

Andrew J Tao

Thomas Francis Fox

James P Roberts

Morgan McGuire

Michael John Toksvig

John W Berendsen

Rajesh Kota

George R Lynch

Mark J French

Colyn Scott Case

Karan Mehra

James Robertson

Robert Jan Schutten

Omkar Paranjape

Brian D Hutsell

Gentaro Hirota

Christopher Thomas Cheng

John S Rhoades

James E Margeson, Iii

Tony Tamasi

Jonathan J Dunaisky

Yan Yan Tang

Andrei Khodakovsky

Svetoslav D Tzvetkov

Edward Colton Greene

Adam Clark Weitkemper

Justin Cobb

Wayne Yamamoto

Praveen Krishnamurthy

Douglas J Hahn

David Matthew Stears

Graphics processing unit (GPU) performance and power efficiency is improved using machine learning to tune operating parameters based on performance monitor values and application information. Performance monitor values are processed using machine learning techniques to generate model parameters, which are used by a control unit within the GPU to provide real-time updates to the operating parameters. In one embodiment, a neural network processes the performance monitor values to generate operating parameters in real-time.

Real-time hardware-assisted GPU tuning using machine learning

Some systems compress data utilized by a user mode software without the user mode software being aware of any compression taking place. To maintain that illusion, such systems prevent user mode software from being aware of and/or accessing the underlying compressed states of the data. While such an approach protects proprietary compression techniques used in such systems from being deciphered, such restrictions limit the ability of user mode software to use the underlying compressed forms of the data in new ways. Disclosed herein are various techniques for allowing user-mode software to access the underlying compressed states of data either directly or indirectly. Such techniques can be used, for example, to allow various user-mode software on a single system or on multiple systems to exchange data in the underlying compression format of the system(s) even when the user mode software is unable to decipher the compression format.

Techniques for accessing and utilizing compressed data and its state information

A parallel processing unit (e.g., a GPU), in some examples, includes a hardware scheduler and hardware arbiter that launch graphics and compute work for simultaneous execution on a SIMD/SIMT processing unit. Each processing unit (e.g., a streaming multiprocessor) of the parallel processing unit operates in a graphics-greedy mode or a compute-greedy mode at respective times. The hardware arbiter, in response to a result of a comparison of at least one monitored performance or utilization metric to a user-configured threshold, can selectively cause the processing unit to run one or more compute work items from a compute queue when the processing unit is operating in the graphics-greedy mode, and cause the processing unit to run one or more graphics work items from a graphics queue when the processing unit is operating in the compute-greedy mode. Associated methods and systems are also described.

Simultaneous compute and graphics scheduling

Motion adaptive shading increases rendering performance for real-time animation in graphics systems while maintaining dynamic image quality. Each frame of an animation is statically displayed within a refresh interval, while a viewer's eyes move continuously relative to the image when actively tracking a moving object being displayed. As a result, a statically displayed frame is essentially smeared across the viewer's continuously moving retina over the lifetime of the frame, causing a perception of blur referred to as an eye-tracking motion blur effect. A region of an image depicting a moving object may be rendered at a lower shading rate because eye-tracking motion blur will substantially mask any blur introduced by reducing the shading rate. Reducing an average shading rate for rendering frames reduces computational effort per frame and may advantageously allow a rendering system to operate at a higher frame rate to provide a smoother, clearer visual experience.

Motion adaptive rendering using variable rate shading

A method, computer readable medium, and system are disclosed for generating multi-view image data. The method includes the steps of processing primitive data of a model to generate processed primitive data that includes multiple position vectors for each vertex in the primitive data, the number of position vectors associated with each vertex being equal to the number of views in at least two views being generated. The method further includes storing the processed primitive data in a buffer. Finally, the processed primitive data may be read from the buffer for each view in the at least two views and transmitted to a raster pipeline to generate image data corresponding to a particular view.

Stereo multi-projection implemented using a graphics processing pipeline

A system and method for decompressing compressed data (e.g., in a frame buffer) and optionally recompressing the data. The method includes determining a portion of an image to be accessed from a memory and sending a conditional read corresponding to the portion of the image. In response to the conditional read, an indicator operable to indicate that the portion of the image is uncompressed may be received. If the portion of the image is compressed, in response to the conditional read, compressed data corresponding to the portion of the image is received. In response to receiving the compressed data, the compressed data is uncompressed into uncompressed data. The uncompressed data may then be written to the memory corresponding to the portion of the image. The uncompressed data may then be in-place compressed for or during subsequent processing.

System and method for frame buffer decompression and/or compression

A system and method for performing tessellation of three-dimensional surface patches performs some tessellation operations using programmable processing units and other tessellation operations using fixed function units with limited precision. (u,v) parameter coordinates for each vertex are computed using fixed function units to offload programmable processing engines. The (u,v) computation is a symmetric operation and is based on integer coordinates of the vertex, tessellation level of detail values, and a spacing mode.

Computing tessellation coordinates using dedicated hardware

Techniques are disclosed for processing graphics objects in a stage of a graphics processing pipeline. The techniques include receiving a graphics primitive associated with the graphics object, and determining a plurality of attributes corresponding to one or more vertices associated with the graphics primitive. The techniques further include determining values for one or more state parameters associated with a downstream stage of the graphics processing pipeline based on a visual effect associated with the graphics primitive. The techniques further include transmitting the state parameter values to the downstream stage of the graphics processing pipeline. One advantage of the disclosed techniques is that visual effects are flexibly and efficiently performed.

Setting downstream render state in an upstream shader

One embodiment of the present invention includes a technique for processing graphics primitives in a tile-based architecture. The technique includes storing, in a buffer, a first plurality of graphics primitives and a first plurality of state bundles received from the world-space pipeline. The technique further includes determining, based on a first condition, that the first plurality of graphics primitives should be replayed from the buffer, and, in response, replaying the first plurality of graphics primitives against a first tile included in a first plurality of tiles. Replaying the first plurality of graphics primitives includes comparing each graphics primitive against the first tile to determine whether the graphics primitive intersects the first tile, determining that one or more graphics primitives intersects the first tile, and transmitting the one or more graphics primitives and one or more associated state bundles to a screen-space pipeline for processing.

Heuristics for improving performance in a tile based architecture

One embodiment of the present invention includes techniques for adaptively sizing cache tiles in a graphics system. A device driver associated with a graphics system sets a cache tile size associated with a cache tile to a first size. The detects a change from a first render target configuration that includes a first set of render targets to a second render target configuration that includes a second set of render targets. The device driver sets the cache tile size to a second size based on the second render target configuration. One advantage of the disclosed approach is that the cache tile size is adaptively sized, resulting in fewer cache tiles for less complex render target configurations. Adaptively sizing cache tiles leads to more efficient processor utilization and reduced power requirements. In addition, a unified L2 cache tile allows dynamic partitioning of cache memory between cache tile data and other data.

Caching of adaptively sized cache tiles in a unified L2 cache with surface compression

One embodiment of the present invention sets forth a technique for mid-primitive execution preemption. When preemption is initiated no new instructions are issued, in-flight instructions progress to an execution unit boundary, and the execution state is unloaded from the processing pipeline. The execution units within the processing pipeline, including the coarse rasterization unit complete execution of in-flight instructions and become idle. However, rasterization of a triangle may be preempted at a coarse raster region boundary. The amount of context state to be stored is reduced because the execution units are idle. Preempting at the mid-primitive level during rasterization reduces the time from when preemption is initiated to when another process can execute because the entire triangle is not rasterized.

Mid-primitive graphics execution preemption

One embodiment of the present invention sets forth a technique for converting alpha values into pixel coverage masks. Geometric coverage is sampled at a number of 'real' sample positions within each pixel. Color and depth values are computed for each of these real samples. Fragment alpha values are used to determine an alpha coverage mask for the real samples and additional 'virtual' samples, in which the number of bits set in the mask bits is proportional to the alpha value. An alpha-to-coverage mode uses the virtual samples to increase the number of transparency levels for each pixel compared with using only real samples. The alpha-to-coverage mode may be used in conjunction with virtual coverage anti-aliasing to provide higher-quality transparency for rendering anti-aliased images.

Alpha-to-coverage using virtual samples

Growing community of inventors

San Jose, CA, United States of America

Emmett Michael Kilgariff