Nvidia Corporation

Pierre Souillot

Dale L Kirkland

Ziyad Sami Hakura

Cynthia Allison

Jerome Francis Duluk, Jr

Mark J Kilgard

Rui Manuel Bastos

Rouslan Lyubomirov Dimitrov

Christian Rouet

Walter Robert Steiner

Christian Amsinck

Cynthia Ann Edgeworth Allison

William Craig McKnight

Joseph Detmer

Don Bittel

One embodiment of the present invention includes a graphics subsystem that includes a tiling unit, a crossbar unit, and a screen-space pipeline. The crossbar unit is configured to transmit primitives interleaved with state change commands to the tiling unit. The tiling unit is configured to record an initial state associated with the primitives and to transmit to the screen-space pipeline one or more primitives in the primitives that overlap a first cache tile. The tiling unit is further configured to transmit the initial state to the screen-space pipeline and to transmit to the screen-space pipeline one or more primitives in the primitives that overlap a second cache tile. The tiling unit includes a state filter block configured to determine that a first state change in the state change commands is followed by a second state change, without an intervening primitive, and to forego transmitting the first state change in response.

State handling in a tiled architecture

One embodiment of the present invention includes a method for generating accumulated bounding boxes for graphics primitives. The method includes generating a first bounding box associated with a first graphics primitive. The method further includes, for each graphics primitive included in a first set of one or more additional graphics primitives, determining that the graphics primitive is within a threshold distance of the first bounding box, and adding the graphics primitive to the first bounding box. The method further includes determining not to add a second graphics primitive to the first bounding box. The method further includes generating a second bounding box associated with the second graphics primitive. Finally, the method includes transmitting the first bounding box to a tiling unit via a crossbar. One advantage of the disclosed embodiments is that multiple bounding boxes are combined to generate an accumulated bounding box that is then transferred across the crossbar.

Techniques for adaptively generating bounding boxes

One embodiment of the present invention includes a method for performing a multi-pass tiling test. The method includes combining a plurality of bounding boxes to generate a coarse bounding box. The method further includes identifying a first cache tile associated with a render surface and determining that the coarse bounding box intersects the first cache tile. The method further includes comparing each bounding box included in the plurality of bounding boxes against the first cache tile to determine that a first set of one or more bounding boxes included in the plurality of bounding boxes intersects the first cache tile. Finally, the method includes, for each bounding box included in the first set of one or more bounding boxes, processing one or more graphics primitives associated with the bounding box. One advantage of the disclosed technique is that the number of intersection calculations performed for each cache tile is reduced.

Data structures for efficient tiled rendering

A technique for efficiently rendering content reduces each complex blend mode to a series of basic blend operations. The series of basic blend operations are executed within a recirculating pipeline until a final blended value is computed. The recirculating pipeline is positioned within a color raster operations unit of a graphics processing unit for efficient access to image buffer data.

Programmable blending in multi-threaded processing units

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San Francisco, CA, United States of America

Pierre Souillot