Parallels International Gmbh

Evgeny Nikitenko

Alexey Ivanov

Nikolay Dobrovolskiy

Incompatible graphics frameworks present a barrier to emulating applications of one operating system (guest OS) upon a computer system employing a different operating system (host OS) such as occurs with virtual machines. Accordingly, in order to address limitations of emulating guest OS graphic pipelines upon the host OS the inventors have established methodologies for cross-platform graphics pipeline emulation, thus enabling efficient implementations of cross-platform virtualization solutions, through the establishment of emulation keys to support generic and specific graphics pipelines together with caching sets of graphical pipelines for subsequent retrieval and execution.

Emulation pipeline selection and emulation pipleline parameter prediction

An example method of hardware-assisted graphics pipeline emulation comprises: computing, based on an input set of graphic primitives, a set of tessellation factors; computing, based on the input set of graphic primitives, a set of points specifying a plurality of patches; computing, based on the set of points, a tessellation count buffer; generating, based on the set of points and the tessellation count buffer, a tessellation offset buffer; performing, using the tessellation offset buffer, a tessellation setup stage; performing, by a graphics processing unit (GPU), a tessellation stage based on the set of tessellation factors, wherein the tessellation stage generates a plurality of output points corresponding to one or more patches of the plurality of patches; and computing, by a domain shader stage, a plurality of vertex positions defined by the plurality of output points.

Hard ware-assisted emulation of graphics pipeline

Disclosed herein are systems and methods for detecting when geometry shaders output a constant amount of data and writing the data into an output stream buffer. In one aspect, an exemplary method comprises gathering information about a number of block executions associated with the received data, analyzing the gathered information to determine whether constant or variable amount of data is generated for at least one of: a stream output or a rasterization, and when the constant amount of data is generated for the stream output, writing the generated data directly into a stream output buffer, and when the constant amount of data is generated for the rasterization, writing the generated data into a rasterization buffer either directly or through a use of an intermediate index buffer.

System and method for detecting when geometry shaders output a constant amount of data

Emulation pipeline selection and emulation pipeline parameter prediction

An example method of hardware-assisted graphics pipeline emulation comprises: computing, based on an input set graphic primitives, a set of tessellation factors; computing, based on the input set graphic primitives, a set of points specifying a plurality of patches; computing, based on the set of points, a tessellation count buffer; generating, based on the set of points and the tessellation count buffer, a tessellation offset buffer; performing, using the tessellation offset buffer, a tessellation setup stage; performing, by a graphics processing unit (GPU), a tessellation stage based on the set of tessellation factors, wherein the tessellation stage generates a plurality of output points corresponding to one or more patches of the plurality of patches; and computing, by a domain shader stage, a plurality of vertex positions defined by the plurality of output points.

Hardware-assisted emulation of graphics pipeline

Disclosed herein are systems and methods for reading input data into a geometry shader by rebuilding an index buffer. In one aspect, an exemplary method comprises constructing T-vectors for one-element ranges of the index buffer by defining each T-vector as a 4-component vector, calculating T-vectors for ranges [0; i] for all vertices of the index buffer by prefix scanning, for each vertex and for each primitive featuring the vertex, determining if the primitive is complete, and for each complete primitive, calculating an offset in an output index buffer using a component of the T-vector used to indicate, for the vertex, a number of complete primitives inside the range and a component that indicates a number of vertices since a last primitive restart, and writing an index value in an output index buffer, and reading input data into the geometry shader in accordance with the written index values.

System and method for reading arrays of data by rebuilding an index buffer while preserving order

Disclosed herein are systems and methods for packing stream outputs of a geometry shader into an output buffer. In one aspect, an exemplary method comprises generating, using vertices of primitives received from one or more geometry shaders, a stream output data together with an index buffer, where each absent vertex is replaced with a primitive restart, rebuilding the index buffer to a list format; and unwrapping the index data of the rebuilt index buffer to a packed buffer.

Growing community of inventors

Moscow, Russia

Evgeny Nikitenko