Nvidia Corporation

Jon Jansen

Louis Bavoil

Alexander Dunn

Jonathan Robbins

Gabriel Liberty

Jason Mawdsley

Marker commands are added to a stream of commands that are executed by a graphics processing unit (GPU) in a computing system. While the GPU executes the commands, information is written to a memory location each time a marker is reached in the pipeline. The memory location is accessible to the central processing unit (CPU), and the information identifies a command executed by the GPU. If the CPU receives an indication that the GPU is in an invalid state, then the CPU responds by accessing the memory location to identify the command executed in the pipeline of the GPU. Consequently, a command that was executing when the GPU entered the invalid state can be identified. This information can be used to pinpoint the cause of the invalid state.

Monitoring execution in a graphics processing unit

A method for rendering a volumetric shadow includes defining a light source ray emanating from a light source, wherein the light source ray intersects a plurality of occluding primitives included within the scene. The method further includes computing an aggregate absorption function for the light source ray, whereby a per-primitive absorption function is computed for each of the plurality of occluding primitives intersecting the light source ray, and the resulting plurality of per-primitive absorption functions are summed to form an aggregate absorption function for the light source ray. A transmittance value is computed as a function of the aggregate absorption function, the transmittance value used to render the volumetric shadow within the scene.

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Santa Clara, CA, United States of America

Jon Jansen