Nintendo Co., Ltd.

Other

Silicon Graphics, Incorporated

Robert J Moore

Howard H Cheng

Timothy J Van Hook

Vimal S Parikh

Carroll Philip Gossett

Anthony P DeLaurier

Genyo Takeda

Shuhei Kato

Nathan F Pooley

Harold S Anderson

Stephen J Shepard

Jeffrey C Doughty

Byron Sheppard

John Princen

Farhad Fouladi

Mark M Leather

Patrick Y Law

Robert A Drebin

Gerald B Curtis

A graphics system including a custom graphics and audio processor produces exciting 2D and 3D graphics and surround sound. The system includes a graphics and audio processor including a 3D graphics pipeline and an audio digital signal processor. Techniques for efficiently buffering graphics data between a producer and a consumer within a low-cost graphics systems such as a 3D home video game overcome the problem that a small-sized FIFO buffer in the graphics hardware may not adequately load balance a producer and consumer&#x2014;causing the producer to stall when the consumer renders bit primitives. One aspect of the invention solves this invention by allocating part of main memory to provide a variable number of variable sized graphics commands buffers. Applications can specify the number of buffers and the size of each. All writes to the graphics FIFO can be routed a buffer in main memory. The producer and consumer independently maintain their own read and write pointers, decoupling the producer from the consumer. The consumer does not write to the buffer, but uses its write pointer to keep track of data valid positions within the buffer. The producer can write a read command to a buffer that directs the consumer to read a string of graphics commands (e.g., display list) stored elsewhere in the memory, and to subsequently return to reading the rest of the buffer. Display lists can be created by simply writing a command that redirects the output of the producer to a display list buffer.

Method and apparatus for buffering graphics data in a graphics system

An interface for a graphics system includes simple yet powerful constructs that are easy for an application programmer to use and learn. Features include a unique vertex representation allowing the graphics pipeline to retain vertex state information and to mix indexed and direct vertex values and attributes; a projection matrix value set command; a display list call object command; and an embedded frame buffer clear/set command.

Graphics system interface

A graphics processor includes an embedded frame buffer for storing frame data prior to sending the frame data to an external location, such as main memory. A copy pipeline is provided which converts the data from one format to another format prior to writing the data to the external location. The conversion may be from one RGB color format to another RGB color format, from one YUV format to another YUV format, from an RGB color format to a YUV color format, or from a YUV color format to an RGB color format. MPEG image data initially stored in main memory in a YUV format as a texture is transferred to the embedded frame buffer prior to initiating a copy-out process via the copy pipeline from the embedded frame buffer to an external frame buffer in main memory. During the copy-out process, pixels are converted from YUV format to an RGB format. A new texture image containing MPEG image data is placed in the embedded frame buffer prior to each successive copy out process operation so as to produce a streaming video image as a surface texture on at least a portion of a displayed object image.

Graphics system with copy out conversions between embedded frame buffer and main memory for producing a streaming video image as a texture on a displayed object image

A graphics system including a custom graphics and audio processor produces exciting 2D and 3D graphics and surround sound. The system includes a graphics and audio processor including a 3D graphics pipeline and an audio digital signal processor. The graphics processor includes an embedded frame buffer for storing frame data prior to sending the frame data to an external location, such as main memory. A copy pipeline is provided which converts the data from one format to another format prior to writing the data to the external location. The conversion may be from one RGB color format to another RGB color format, from one YUV format to another YUV format, from an RGB color format to a YUV color format, or from a YUV color format to an RGB color format. The formatted data is either transferred to a display buffer, for use by the video interface, or to a texture buffer, for use as a texture by the graphics pipeline in a subsequent rendering process.

Graphics system with copy out conversions between embedded frame buffer and main memory

A graphics system including a custom graphics and audio processor produces exciting 2D and 3D graphics and surround sound. The system includes a graphics and audio processor including a 3D graphics pipeline and an audio digital signal processor. The graphics pipeline processes graphics commands at different rates depending upon the type of operation being performed. This makes it difficult to synchronize pipeline operations with external operations (e.g., a graphics processor with a main processor). To solve this problem, a synchronization token including a programmable data message is inserted into a graphics command stream sent to a graphics pipeline. At a predetermined point near the bottom of the pipeline, the token is captured and a signal is generated indicated the token has arrived. The graphics command producer can look at the captured token to determine which of multiple possible tokens has been captured, and can use the information to synchronize a task with the graphics pipeline. Applications include maintaining memory coherence in memory shared between the 3D graphics pipeline and a graphics command producer.

Graphics pipeline token synchronization

In a 3D interactive computer graphics system such as a video game display system, polygon vertex data is fed to a 3D graphics processor/display engine via a vertex cache used to cache and organize indexed primitive vertex data streams. The vertex cache may be a small, low-latency cache memory local to the display engine hardware. Polygons can be represented as indexed arrays, e.g., indexed linear lists of data components representing some feature of a vertex (for example, positions, colors, surface normals, or texture coordinates). The vertex cache can fetch the relevant blocks of indexed vertex attribute data on an as-needed basis to make it available to the display processor&mdash;providing spatial locality for display processing without requiring the vertex data to be prestored in display order. Efficiency can be increased by customizing and optimizing the vertex cache and associated tags for the purpose of delivering vertices to the graphics engine&mdash;allowing more efficient prefetching and assembling of vertices than might be possible using a general-purpose cache and tag structure.

Vertex cache for 3D computer graphics

A graphics system including a custom graphics and audio processor produces exciting 2D and 3D graphics and surround sound. The system includes a graphics and audio processor including a 3D graphics pipeline and an audio digital signal processor. The same texture mapping hardware used for color texturing provides resampled z texturing for sprites with depth or other applications. A z blender performs a z blending operation in screen space to blend surface z values with z texel values to provide per-pixel mapping of resampled z textures onto sampled 3D surface locations. Z texels can represent absolute depths or depth displacements relative to primitive surface depth. The z texel values may add to or replace primitive surface z values, and a constant bias may be added if desired. The resulting depth values are used for occlusion testing. Z textures can be generated by copying out portions of an embedded z buffer and providing the copied depth values to the texture mapping hardware. Multiple z texel formats are supported.

Z-texturing

High performance low cost video game system with coprocessor providing high speed efficient 3D graphics and digital audio signal processing

Application program interface for a graphics system

Growing community of inventors

Sunnyvale, CA, United States of America

Robert J Moore