Advanced Micro Devices Corporation

Ati Technologies Ulc

Pazhani Pillai

Christopher Jude Brennan

Skyler Jonathon Saleh

Vineet Goel

Ruijin Wu

Andrew S Pomianowski

Harish Kumar Kovalam Rajendran

Laurent Lefebvre

Mika Tuomi

Kiia Kaappoo Kallio

Jan Henrik Achrenius

Mark A Natale

A method and apparatus for integrating data compression in a computer system includes receiving first data at a first system level. Based upon a number of planes of the first data being less than or equal to a threshold, the data is compressed with a first data compression scheme, and transferred to a second system level for processing. Based upon the number of planes of the first data exceeding the threshold, the first data is transferred uncompressed to the second system level for processing. Based upon the received data at the second system level being compressed with the first compression scheme, the data is transferred to a third system level, and based upon the received data at the second system level being uncompressed with the first compression scheme, compressing the data with a second compression scheme, and transferring the compressed data to the third system level.

Method and system for integrating compression

Methods, devices, and systems for prefetching data. First data is loaded from a first memory location. The first data in cached in a cache memory. Other data is prefetched to the cache memory based on a compression of the first data and a compression of the other data. In some implementations, the compression of the first data and the compression of the other data are determined based on metadata associated with the first data and metadata associated with the other data. In some implementations, the other data is prefetched to the cache memory based on a total of a compressed size of the first data and a compressed size of the other data being less than a threshold size. In some implementations, the other data is not prefetched to the cache memory based on the other data being uncompressed.

Compression aware prefetch

Techniques for performing shader operations are provided. The techniques include, performing pixel shading at a shading rate defined by pixel shader variable rate shading ('VRS') data, and updating the pixel VRS data that indicates one or more shading rates for one or more tiles based on whether the tiles of the one or more tiles include triangle edges or do not include triangle edges, to generate updated VRS data.

VRS rate feedback

A method and apparatus for processing color data includes storing fragment pointer and color data together in a color buffer. A delta color compression (DCC) key indicating the color data to fetch for processing is stored, and the fragment pointer and color data is fetched based upon the read DCC key for decompression.

Method and apparatus of data compression

Systems, apparatuses, and methods for implementing a depth buffer pre-pass are disclosed. A rendering application uses a binning approach to render primitives of a virtual scene on a tile-by-tile basis, with each tile corresponding to a portion of the screen. The application causes a depth buffer pre-pass to be performed for the primitives of the tile before a pixel shader is invoked. During the depth buffer pre-pass, only the depth part of the virtual scene is rendered to determine which pixel samples are visible and which pixel samples are hidden. Then, the scene is redrawn, but the pixel samples that are hidden are not sent to the pixel shader. In cases where a relatively large percentage of primitives overlap, this technique increases the efficiency of the rendering application since pixel shading can be avoided for the pixel samples that are hidden.

Depth buffer pre-pass

Techniques for processing pixel data are provided. The techniques include, in a first mode in which blending is enabled, reading in render target color data from a memory system; blending the render target color data with one or more fragments received from a pixel shader stage to generate blended color data; outputting the blended color data to the memory system utilizing a first amount of bandwidth; in a second mode in which blending is disabled and variable rate shading is enabled, amplifying shaded coarse fragments received from the pixel shader stage to generate fine fragments; and outputting the fine fragments to the memory system utilizing a second amount of bandwidth that is higher than the first amount of bandwidth.

Data output rate with variable rate shading

Techniques for performing shader operations are provided. The techniques include, performing pixel shading at a shading rate defined by pixel shader variable rate shading ('VRS') data, updating the pixel VRS data that indicates one or more shading rates for one or more tiles based on whether the tiles of the one or more tiles include triangle edges or do not include triangle edges, to generate updated VRS data, and writing a VRS rate feedback buffer based on the updated VRS data.

Systems, apparatuses, and methods for implementing raster order view enforcement techniques are disclosed. A processor includes a plurality of compute units coupled to one or more memories. A plurality of waves are launched in parallel for execution on the plurality of compute units, where each wave comprises a plurality of threads. A dependency chain is generated for each wave of the plurality of waves. The compute units wait for all older waves to complete dependency chain generation prior to executing any threads with dependencies. Responsive to all older waves completing dependency chain generation, a given thread with a dependency is executed only if all other threads upon which the given thread is dependent have become inactive. When executed, the plurality of waves generate a plurality of pixels to be driven to a display.

Raster order view

A technique for determining the centroid for fragments generated using variable rate shading. Because the barycentric interpolation used to determine texture coordinates for pixels is based on the premise that the point being interpolated is within the triangle, centroids that are outside of the triangle can produce undesirable visual artifacts. Another concern, however, is that the further the centroid is from the center of a pixel, the less accurate quad-based pixel derivatives become for attributes of that pixel. To address these concerns, the position of the sample that is both covered by the triangle and the closest to the center of the pixel, out of all covered samples of the pixel, is used as the centroid for a partially covered pixel. For a fully covered pixel (all samples in a pixel are covered by a triangle), the center of that pixel is used as the centroid.

Centroid selection for variable rate shading

Systems, apparatuses, and methods for implementing pixel wait synchronization techniques are disclosed. A system includes a host processor and a graphics processor which includes at least one graphics pipeline. During execution of a graphics application, the host processor determines that a second draw call is dependent on a first draw call. The host processor issues a wait sync event prior to issuing the second draw call to the graphics pipeline responsive to determining that the first draw call is still in-flight in the graphics pipeline. After the second draw call is issued to the graphics pipeline, the second draw call is processed by one or more stages of the graphics pipeline while the first draw call is still in-flight. The graphics pipeline stalls the second draw call at a given intermediate stage until a corresponding event counter equals a value specified by the wait sync event.

Pixel wait synchronization

Systems, apparatuses, and methods for managing a non-power of two memory configuration are disclosed. A computing system includes at least one or more clients, a control unit, and a memory subsystem with a non-power of two number of active memory channels. The control unit reduces a ratio of the number of active memory channels over the total number of physical memory channels to a ratio of a first number to a second number. If a first subset of physical address bits of a received memory request are greater than or equal to the first number, the control unit calculates a third number which is equal to a second subset of physical address bits modulo the first number and the control unit uses a concatenation of the third number and a third subset of physical address bits to select a memory channel for issuing the received memory request.

Non-power of two memory configuration

Improvements in graphics processing pipelines are disclosed. The graphics processing pipeline processes graphics objects in a particular order (application programming interface order&#x2014;'API order') as requested by an application or other entity. However, certain components within the graphics processing pipeline, such as the pixel shader stage, may process those objects out of order. A technique is provided herein to allow the pixel shader stage to complete and export processed fragments out of order. The technique includes using a scoreboard to determine whether fragments ready to be exported from a pixel shader stage are the newest fragments in API order. If the fragments are the newest in API order, then the fragments are exported. If the fragments are not the newest in API order, then the fragments are discarded.

Growing community of inventors

Boxborough, MA, United States of America

Pazhani Pillai