Imagination Technologies Limited

Caustic Graphics, Inc.

Mine One Gmbh

James Alexander McCombe

Luke Tilman Peterson

Ryan R Salsbury

Steven John Clohset

Jason Rupert Redgrave

Stephen C Purcell

Sean Matthew Gies

Christoph Birkhold

Aaron Dwyer

Neils Nesse

Brian E Smith

Steven Blackmon

Rolf Herken

Suguru Nishioka

Stephen John Clohset

Nur Monson

Brian W Smith

In some aspects, finer grained parallelism is achieved by segmenting programmatic workloads into smaller discretized portions, where a first element can be indicative both of a configuration or program to be executed, and a first data set to be used in such execution, while a second element can be indicative of a second data element or group. The discretized portions can cause program execute on distributed processors. Approaches to selecting processors, and allocating local memory associated with those processors are disclosed. In one example, discretized portions that share a program have an anti-affinity to cause dispersion, for initial execution assignment. Flags, such as programmer and compiler generated flags can be used in determining such allocations. Workloads can be grouped according to compatibility of memory usage requirements.

Scheduling computation tasks for execution by multiple processing units using computation task profiling

Aspects include a multistage collector to receive outputs from plural processing elements. Processing elements may comprise (each or collectively) a plurality of clusters, with one or more ALUs that may perform SIMD operations on a data vector and produce outputs according to the instruction stream being used to configure the ALU(s). The multistage collector includes substituent components each with at least one input queue, a memory, a packing unit, and an output queue; these components can be sized to process groups of input elements of a given size, and can have multiple input queues and a single output queue. Some components couple to receive outputs from the ALUs and others receive outputs from other components. Ultimately, the multistage collector can output groupings of input elements. Each grouping of elements (e.g., at input queues, or stored in the memories of component) can be formed based on matching of index elements.

Multistage collector for outputs in multiprocessor systems

A brood box for a beehive includes a main box having a plurality of sides and a bottom configured to be in a continuous and seamless unibody structure and defining a cavity inside the main box, each of the plurality of sides and the bottom being continuously insulated with one another to thereby insulate and thermally isolate the main box cavity from an environment outside of the brood box. Also included is a transition plate configured to be disposed on top of the main box cavity, and an insulated lid configured to interface with the plurality of sides of the main box and being disposed to cover the main box cavity and the transition plate in certain weather conditions.

Brood box for a beehive

Aspects comprise systems implementing 3-D graphics processing functionality in a multiprocessing system. Control flow structures are used in scheduling instances of computation in the multiprocessing system, where different points in the control flow structure serve as points where deferral of some instances of computation can be performed in favor of scheduling other instances of computation. In some examples, the control flow structure identifies particular tasks, such as intersection testing of a particular portion of an acceleration structure, and a particular element of shading code. In some examples, the aspects are used in 3-D graphics processing systems that can perform ray tracing based rendering.

Ray tracing system architectures and methods

Aspects include computation systems that can identify computation instances that are not capable of being reentrant, or are not reentrant capable on a target architecture, or are non-reentrant as a result of having a memory conflict in a particular execution situation. For example, a system can have a plurality of computation units, each with an independently schedulable SIMD vector. Computation instances can be defined by a program module, and a data element(s) that may be stored in a local cache for a particular computation unit of the plurality. Each local cache does not maintain coherency controls for such data elements. During scheduling, a scheduler can maintain a list of running (or runnable) instances, and attempt to schedule new computation instances by determining whether any new computation instance conflicts with a running instance and responsively defer scheduling. Such memory conflict checks can be conditioned on a flag or other indication of the potential for non-reentrancy.

Scheduling heterogeneous computation on multithreaded processors

Aspects comprise systems implementing 3-D graphics processing functionality in a multiprocessing system. Control flow structures are used in scheduling instances of computation in the multiporcessing system, where different points in the control flow structure serve as points where deferral of some instances of computation can be performed in favor of scheduling other instances of computation. In some examples, the control flow structure identifies particular tasks, such as intersection testing of a particular portion of an acceleration structure, and a particular element of shading code. In some examples, the aspects are used in 3-D graphics processing systems that can perform ray tracing based rendering.

Methods, systems, devices and computer software/program code products enable efficient handling and remedying of unreliable sensor data, such as data captured by cameras in a virtual 3-dimensional (V3D) imaging or communications system; and enable, in a visual communications system involving a plurality of display devices usable by respective users, synchronization to a common space, and display of images by a receiving device in an orientation independent of the angle at which the receiving device is held.

Visual communications methods, systems and software

In some aspects, systems and methods provide for forming groupings of a plurality of independently-specified computation workloads, such as graphics processing workloads, and in a specific example, ray tracing workloads. The workloads include a scheduling key, which is one basis on which the groupings can be formed. Workloads grouped together can all execute from the same source of instructions, on one or more different private data elements. Such workloads can recursively instantiate other workloads that reference the same private data elements. In some examples, the scheduling key can be used to identify a data element to be used by all the workloads of a grouping. Memory conflicts to private data elements are handled through scheduling of non-conflicted workloads or specific instructions and/or deferring conflicted workloads instead of locking memory locations.

Graphics processor with non-blocking concurrent architecture

A user interface to a virtual camera for a 3-D rendering application provides various features. A rendering engine can continuously refine the image being displayed through the virtual camera, and the user interface can contain an element for indicating capture of the image as currently displayed, which causes saving of the currently displayed image. Autofocus (AF) and autoexposure (AE) reticles can allow selection of objects in a 3-D scene, from which an image will be rendered, for each of AE and AF. A focal distance can be determined by identifying a 3-D object visible at a pixel overlapped by the AF reticle, and a current viewpoint. The AF reticle can be hidden in response to a depth of field selector being set to infinite depth of field. The AF and AE reticles can be linked and unlinked, allowing different 3-D objects for each of AF and AE.

Virtual camera for 3-d modeling applications

Methods, systems, devices and computer software/program code products enable efficiently finding stereo correspondence between a feature or set of features in a first image or signal, and a search domain in a second image or signal.

Stereo correspondence search

Methods, devices, systems and computer software/program code products improve the reliability of scene reconstruction through the use of a persistent store or cache to retain scene information observed across one or more previous frames.

Disparity cache

Systems and methods for producing an acceleration structure provide for subdividing a 3-D scene into a plurality of volumetric portions, which have different sizes, each being addressable using a multipart address indicating a location and a relative size of each volumetric portion. A stream of primitives is processed by characterizing each according to one or more criteria, selecting a relative size of volumetric portions for use in bounding the primitive, and finding a set of volumetric portions of that relative size which bound the primitive. A primitive ID is stored in each location of a cache associated with each volumetric portion of the set of volumetric portions. A cache location is selected for eviction, responsive to each cache eviction decision made during the processing. An element of an acceleration structure according to the contents of the evicted cache location is generated, responsive to the evicted cache location.

Systems and methods for 3-D scene acceleration structure creation and updating

Methods, systems, devices and computer software/program code products enable generating reduced-noise image frames based on image frames received from a digital, camera pipeline; and enable efficient stereo image search between corresponding images generated by at least two cameras.

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San Francisco, CA, United States of America

James Alexander McCombe