Advanced Micro Devices Corporation

Matthäus G Chajdas

Christopher Jude Brennan

David Ronald Oldcorn

Konstantin I Shkurko

Michael A Kern

Michael Mantor

Brian K Bennett

Robert W Martin

Rex Eldon Mccrary

Lou Isabelle Kramer

Systems, apparatuses, and methods for implementing a hierarchical scheduling in fixed-function graphics pipeline are disclosed. In various implementations, a processor includes a pipeline comprising a plurality of fixed-function units and a scheduler. The scheduler is configured to schedule a first operation for execution by one or more fixed-function units of the pipeline by scheduling the first operation with a first unit of the pipeline, responsive to a first mode of operation and schedule a second operation for execution by a selected fixed-function unit of the pipeline by scheduling the second operation directly to the selected fixed-function unit, independent of a sequential arrangement of the one or more fixed-function units in the pipeline, responsive to a second mode of operation.

System and method for scheduling operations in a graphics pipeline

A method and a processing device for performing rendering are disclosed. The method comprises generating a base hierarchy tree comprising data representing a first object and generating a second hierarchy tree representing a second object comprising shared data of the base hierarchy tree and the second hierarchy tree and difference data. The method further comprises storing the difference data in the memory without storing the shared data, and generating an overlay hierarchy tree comprising the shared data, the difference data, and indication information indicating nodes of the overlay hierarchy tree that comprise the difference data. The method further comprises rendering the first object using the data stored for the base hierarchy tree, and rendering the second object using any one or a combination of the shared data, the difference data, and the indication information.

Overlay trees for ray tracing

Described herein is a technique for performing operations for a bounding volume hierarchy. The techniques include: for a bounding box with quantized orientation, the bounding box being part of a bounding volume hierarchy, rotating a ray according to the quantized orientation to generate a rotated ray; performing an intersection test against the bounding box with the rotated ray; and according to the results of the intersection test, continuing traversal of the bounding volume hierarchy.

Bounding volume hierarchy having oriented bounding boxes with quantized rotations

Devices and methods for partial sorting for coherence recovery are provided. The partial sorting is efficiently executed by utilizing existing hardware along the memory path (e.g., memory local to the compute unit). The devices include an accelerated processing device which comprises memory and a processor. The processor is, for example, a compute unit of a GPU which comprises a plurality of SIMD units and is configured to determine, for data entries each comprising a plurality of bits, a number of occurrences of different types of the data entries by storing the number of occurrences in one or more portions of the memory local to the processor, sort the data entries based on the determined number of occurrences stored in the one or more portions of the memory local to the processor and execute the sorted data entries.

Partial sorting for coherency recovery

Systems, apparatuses, and methods for implementing a downsampler in a single compute shader pass are disclosed. A central processing unit (CPU) issues a single-pass compute shader kernel to perform downsampling of a texture on a graphics processing unit (GPU). The GPU includes a plurality of compute units for executing thread groups of the kernel. Each thread group fetches a patch of the texture, and each individual thread downsamples four quads of texels to compute mip levels 1 and 2 independently of the other threads. For mip level 3, texel data is written back over one of the local data share (LDS) entries from which the texel data was loaded. This eliminates the need for a barrier between loads and stores for computing mip level 3. The remaining mip levels are computed in a similar fashion by the thread groups of the single-pass kernel.

Single pass downsampler

Described herein is a technique for modifying a bounding volume hierarchy. The techniques include combining preferred orientations of child nodes of a first bounding box node to generate a first preferred orientation; based on the first preferred orientation, converting one or more child nodes of the first bounding box node into one or more oriented bounding box nodes; combining preferred orientations of child nodes of a second bounding box node to generate a second preferred orientation; and based on the second preferred orientation, maintaining one or more children of the second bounding box node as non-oriented bounding box nodes.

Techniques for introducing oriented bounding boxes into bounding volume hierarchy

Devices and methods for using ray tracing to render similar but different objects in a scene are described which include rendering a second object using an overlay hierarchy tree. The overlay hierarchy tree comprises shared data from a base hierarchy tree comprising data representing a first object in the scene, a second hierarchy tree representing the second object in the scene, difference data representing a difference between the first object and the second object and indication information which indicates nodes of the overlay hierarchy tree comprising difference data.

Systems, apparatuses, and methods for executing a shader core instruction to invoke depth culling are disclosed. A shader core executes an instruction to invoke a culling function on a depth culling unit for one or more entities prior to completing a corresponding draw call. The shader core provides a mode and coordinates to the depth culling unit as a result of executing the instruction. The depth culling unit implements the culling function to access a live depth buffer to determine whether one or more primitives corresponding to the entities are occluded. The culling unit returns indication(s) to the shader core regarding the result(s) of processing the one or more primitives. For example, if the results indicate a primitive is occluded, the shader core cancels the draw call for the primitive.

Growing community of inventors

Munich, Germany

Matthäus G Chajdas