Ati Technologies Ulc

Amd Inc.

Gordon Elder, Iii

Timothy J Van Hook

Farhad Fouladi

Konstantine I Iourcha

Raja Koduri

Elaine Poon

Jeff Golds

The present invention provides a scheme for compressing the color components of image data, and in particular, data used in multi-sampled anti-aliasing applications. Adjacent pixels are grouped into rectangular tiles, with the sample colors stored in compressed formats accessible via an encoded pointer. In one embodiment, duplicate colors are stored once. Unlike prior compression schemes that rely on pixel to pixel correlation, the present invention takes advantages of the sample to sample correlation that exists within the pixels. A memory and graphics processor configuration incorporating the tile compression schemes is also provided. The configuration defines the tile sizes in main memory and cache memory. In one embodiment, graphics processor relies on a Tile Format Table (TFT) to process incoming tiles in compressed formats. The present invention reduces memory consumption and speeds up essential and oft-repeated operations in rendering. Thus it is valuable in the design and manufacture of graphic sub-systems.

Method and apparatus for compression of multi-sampled anti-aliasing color data

Embodiments described herein provide a programmable mapping scheme for mapping information to resources of a system. In an embodiment, a programmable lattice method operates to map information to resources of a system. For example, the programmable lattice method can be used to map pixel data to graphics processing resources of a graphics processing system. In another embodiment, a programmable hybrid method operates to map information to resources of a system. For example, the programmable hybrid method can be used to map pixel data to graphics processing resources of a graphics processing system. The mapping methods described are applicable to any multi-dimensional array processing (e.g., 2D and 3D). The methods provide a uniform distribution of resources and tend to reduce resource collisions when allocating information to a resource.

Methods for allocating information to system resources using improved mapping

Growing community of inventors

Los Altos, CA, United States of America

Gordon Elder, Iii