Nvidia Corporation

Nvdia Corporation

Eric Brian Lum

Henry Packard Moreton

Yury Y Uralsky

Rui Manuel Bastos

Jeffrey A Bolz

Ziyad Sami Hakura

Jerome Francis Duluk, Jr

Justin Cobb

Dale L Kirkland

Walter Robert Steiner

Emmett Michael Kilgariff

Patrick Richard Brown

Steven James Heinrich

Rouslan Lyubomirov Dimitrov

Jonathan J Dunaisky

Eric Enderton

Kayvon Fatahalian

Yong He

Barry Nolan Rodgers

Jack H Choquette

Christian Amsinck

Jonah Matthew Alben

Tyson J Bergland

Christian Rouet

Thomas A Petersen

Ankan Banerjee

Prakshep Mehta

Lei Yang

Gregory Massal

Oleg Kuznetsov

Shirish C Gadre

Marco Salvi

Alexander Lev Minkin

Bengt-Olaf Schneider

Aaron Eliot Lefohn

Anjul Patney

Michael Alan Fetterman

Alexey Panteleev

Christopher Ryan Wyman

Stefano A Pescador

Evgeny Makarov

Andrei Khodakovsky

Gerald F Luiz

Timothy Paul Lottes

Cyril Crassin

Sergey Bolotov

G Evan Hart, Jr

Yubo Zhang

Kyle Perry Roden

John Stephen Montrym

Steven E Molnar

Timo Oskari Aila

Tero Tapani Karras

Albert Meixner

Mark J Kilgard

Walter E Donovan

Cass Watson Everitt

Rui Bastos

Patrick James Neill

Chris Amsinck

Ignacio Llamas Ubieto

David Charles Patrick

Tony Louca

Alexey Barkovoy

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

One embodiment of the present invention includes a parallel processing unit (PPU) that performs pixel shading at variable granularities. For effects that vary at a low frequency across a pixel block, a coarse shading unit performs the associated shading operations on a subset of the pixels in the pixel block. By contrast, for effects that vary at a high frequency across the pixel block, fine shading units perform the associated shading operations on each pixel in the pixel block. Because the PPU implements coarse shading units and fine shading units, the PPU may tune the shading rate per-effect based on the frequency of variation across each pixel group. By contrast, conventional PPUs typically compute all effects per-pixel, performing redundant shading operations for low frequency effects. Consequently, to produce similar image quality, the PPU consumes less power and increases the rendering frame rate compared to a conventional PPU.

Adaptive shading in a graphics processing pipeline

A raster unit is configured to generate different sample patterns for adjacent pixels within a given frame. In addition, the raster unit may adjust the sample patterns between frames. The raster unit includes an index unit that selects a sample pattern table for use with a current frame. For a given pixel, the index unit extracts a sample pattern from the selected sample pattern table. The extracted sample pattern is used to generate coverage information for the pixel. The coverage information for all pixels is then used to generate an image. The resultant image may then be filtered to reduce or remove artifacts induced by the changing of sample locations.

Enhanced anti-aliasing by varying sample patterns spatially and/or temporally

One aspect of the current disclosure provides a method of upscaling an image. The method includes: rendering an image, wherein the rendering includes generating color samples of the image at a first resolution and depth samples of the image at a second resolution, which is higher than the first resolution; and upscaling the image to an upscaled image at a third resolution, which is higher than the first resolution, using the color samples and the depth samples.

HW-assisted upscaling and multi-sampling using a high resolution depth buffer

Methods and apparatuses are disclosed for reporting texture footprint information. A texture footprint identifies the portion of a texture that will be utilized in rendering a pixel in a scene. The disclosed methods and apparatuses advantageously improve system efficiency in decoupled shading systems by first identifying which texels in a given texture map are needed for subsequently rendering a scene. Therefore, the number of texels that are generated and stored may be reduced to include the identified texels. Texels that are not identified need not be rendered and/or stored.

Method and apparatus for obtaining sampled positions of texturing operations

A tile coalescer within a graphics processing pipeline coalesces coverage data into tiles. The coverage data indicates, for a set of XY positions, whether a graphics primitive covers those XY positions. The tile indicates, for a larger set of XY positions, whether one or more graphics primitives cover those XY positions. The tile coalescer includes coverage data in the tile only once for each XY position, thereby allowing the API ordering of the graphics primitives covering each XY position to be preserved. The tile is then distributed to a set of streaming multiprocessors for shading and blending operations. The different streaming multiprocessors execute thread groups to process the tile. In doing so, those thread groups may perform read-modify-write operations with data stored in memory. Each such thread group is scheduled to execute via atomic operations, and according to the API order of the associated graphics primitives.

Techniques for maintaining atomicity and ordering for pixel shader operations

One embodiment of the present invention includes a method for rendering a geometry object in a computer-generated scene. A screen space associated with a display screen is divided into a set of regions. For each region; a first sampling factor in a horizontal dimension is computed that represents a horizontal sampling factor for pixels located in the region, a second sampling factor in a vertical dimension is computed that represents a vertical sampling factor for the pixels located in the region, a first offset in the horizontal dimension is computed that represents a horizontal position associated with the region, and a second offset in the vertical dimension is computed that represent a vertical position associated with the region. When the geometry object is determined to intersect more than one region, an instance of the geometry object is generated each region that the geometry object intersects.

Piecewise linear irregular rasterization

One embodiment of the present invention includes techniques for processing a multi-resolution hierarchy, where an application configures a ROP unit to render all the levels included in the multi-resolution hierarchy to a single composite render target. The ROP unit renders memory pages to the composite render target in pitch order. In contrast, the texture unit accesses the composite render target with memory pages in pitch order for each level of the hierarchy. The application configures the MMU to ensure that the composite render target is correctly interpreted by the texture unit. Notably, the MMU translates ROP unit virtual addresses and texture unit virtual addresses using different mapping strategies to the same physical address space. One advantage of the disclosed embodiments is that rendering to the multi-resolution hierarchy does not require the CPU to execute the state parameter changes that are associated with rendering the different hierarchical levels using prior-art techniques.

Rendering to multi-resolution hierarchies

A system, method, and computer program product are provided for implementing anti-aliasing operations using a programmable sample pattern table. The method includes the steps of receiving an instruction that causes one or more values to be stored in one or more corresponding entries of the programmable sample pattern table and performing an anti-aliasing operation based on at least one value stored in the programmable sample pattern table. At least one value is selected from the programmable sample pattern table based on, at least in part, a location of one or more corresponding pixels.

System, method and computer program product for implementing anti-aliasing operations using a programmable sample pattern table

A system, method, and computer program product are provided for executing processes involving at least one primitive in a graphics processor, utilizing a data structure. In operation, a data structure is associated with at least one primitive. Additionally, a plurality of processes involving the at least one primitive are executed in a graphics processor, utilizing the data structure. Moreover, the plurality of processes include at least one of selecting at least one surface or portion thereof to which to render, or selecting at least one of a plurality of viewports.

System, method, and computer program product for executing processes involving at least one primitive in a graphics processor, utilizing a data structure

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San Jose, CA, United States of America

Eric Brian Lum