Nvidia Corporation

Jonathan J Dunaisky

Eric Brian Lum

Henry Packard Moreton

Steven E Molnar

Rui Manuel Bastos

Yury Y Uralsky

Steven James Heinrich

Christian Amsinck

Jerome Francis Duluk, Jr

Shirish C Gadre

Jeffrey A Bolz

David Kirk McAllister

Michael Alan Fetterman

Stefano A Pescador

Poornachandra Rao

William Craig McKnight

Emmett Michael Kilgariff

James Leroy Deming

Patrick Richard Brown

Alexander Lev Minkin

Bengt-Olaf Schneider

Bryon S Nordquist

Eric T Anderson

Joel James McCormack

Andrew J Tao

Christian Rouet

Daniel P Wilde

Mark J French

Narayan Kulshrestha

Justin Cobb

Ramesh Jandhyala

Barry Nolan Rodgers

Subodh Kumar

Weizhong Xu

Amanpreet Grewal

Tony Louca

Joseph Detmer

John Malcolm Neil

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 system and method for decompressing compressed data (e.g., in a frame buffer) and optionally recompressing the data. The method includes determining a portion of an image to be accessed from a memory and sending a conditional read corresponding to the portion of the image. In response to the conditional read, an indicator operable to indicate that the portion of the image is uncompressed may be received. If the portion of the image is compressed, in response to the conditional read, compressed data corresponding to the portion of the image is received. In response to receiving the compressed data, the compressed data is uncompressed into uncompressed data. The uncompressed data may then be written to the memory corresponding to the portion of the image. The uncompressed data may then be in-place compressed for or during subsequent processing.

System and method for frame buffer decompression and/or compression

Updating depth related graphics data is described. Geometric primitives are processed. Pixels are generated from the primitives based on the processing, each of which has at least one corresponding depth value. Culling is performed on a first group of the pixels, based on a representation of the at least one depth related value corresponding to each. Pixels may be discarded based on the culling and upon which a second group of pixels remain. A depth related raster operations function is performed, in which data is transacted with a depth buffer. The culling function is updated in relation to the transacting. The updating is performed on the basis of a granularity, which characterizes the culling function.

Updating depth related graphics data

One embodiment of the present invention includes a memory management unit (MMU) that is configured to manage sparse mappings. The MMU processes requests to translate virtual addresses to physical addresses based on page table entries (PTEs) that indicate a sparse status. If the MMU determines that the PTE does not include a mapping from a virtual address to a physical address, then the MMU responds to the request based on the sparse status. If the sparse status is active, then the MMU determines the physical address based on whether the type of the request is a write operation and, subsequently, generates an acknowledgement of the request. By contrast, if the sparse status is not active, then the MMU generates a page fault. Advantageously, the disclosed embodiments enable the computer system to manage sparse mappings without incurring the performance degradation associated with both page faults and conventional software-based sparse mapping management.

Managing memory regions to support sparse mappings

A method, in one embodiment, can include performing difference transformation of image samples. In addition, the method can also include performing length selection. Furthermore; the method can include performing packing that includes utilizing varying sized bit fields to produce a compressed representation.

Variable-width differential memory compression

Approaches are disclosed for performing memory access operations in a texture processing pipeline having a first portion configured to process texture memory access operations and a second portion configured to process non-texture memory access operations. A texture unit receives a memory access request. The texture unit determines whether the memory access request includes a texture memory access operation. If the memory access request includes a texture memory access operation, then the texture unit processes the memory access request via at least the first portion of the texture processing pipeline, otherwise, the texture unit processes the memory access request via at least the second portion of the texture processing pipeline. One advantage of the disclosed approach is that the same processing and cache memory may be used for both texture operations and load/store operations to various other address spaces, leading to reduced surface area and power consumption.

Load/store operations in texture hardware

A method, in one embodiment, can include performing difference transformation of image samples. In addition, the method can also include performing length selection. The method can also include performing a prioritized ordering of difference data. Furthermore, the method can include performing packing that includes utilizing varying sized bit fields to produce a lossy compressed representation.

Progressive lossy memory compression

A method for compressing framebuffer data is presented. The method includes determining a reduction ratio for framebuffer data in a tile including multiple samples. The reduction ratio determined is independent of the sampling mode, where the sampling mode is the number of samples within each pixel in the tile. The method further includes comparing a first portion of the framebuffer data for each of the multiple samples to determine an equality comparison result and also comparing a second portion of the framebuffer data for each one of the multiple samples to compute per-channel differences for each one of the multiple samples and testing the per-channel differences against a threshold value to determine a threshold comparison result. Finally, the method comprises compressing the framebuffer data for the tile based on the reduction ratio, the equality comparison result and the threshold comparison result to produce output framebuffer data for the tile.

Alternate reduction ratios and threshold mechanisms for framebuffer compression

A system, method, and computer program product are provided for validating a graphics processor design. In operation, a test image is identified. Additionally, a reference image is automatically selected from a set of reference images. Furthermore, a graphics processor design is validated using the test image and the selected reference image.

System, method, and computer program product for validating a graphics processor design

A technique for handling floating-point special values, e.g., Infinity, NaN, &#x2212;Zero, and denorms, during blend operations is provided so that blend operations on fragment color values that contain special values can be performed in compliance with special value handling rules. In particular, the presence of special values is detected or the potential presence of special values is detected. This information is used to qualify when blend optimizations may be performed, so that floating point blend operations can remain conformant to special value handling rules.

Blend optimizations that are conformant to floating-point rules

Growing community of inventors

Fort Collins, CO, United States of America

Jonathan J Dunaisky