Nvidia Corporation

Robert Ohannessian

Shirish C Gadre

Nicholas Wang

Lacky V Shah

John Matthew Burgess

William P Newhall, Jr

Samuli Matias Laine

Jack H Choquette

Timo Oskari Aila

Tero Tapani Karras

Emmett Michael Kilgariff

Olivier Giroux

Michael Alan Fetterman

Greg Muthler

Philip Alexander Cuadra

Luke Durant

Gerald F Luiz

Ian Kwong

Arthur Merlin Danskin

Ziyad Sami Hakura

Peter Michael Nelson

John Erik Lindholm

Steven E Molnar

Walter E Donovan

Patrick Richard Brown

Xiaogang Qiu

Ross Cunniff

Christian Amsinck

James C Bowman

Scott R Whitman

John H Edmondson

Dale L Kirkland

Brian Matthew Fahs

Harold Robert Zable

Roger L Allen

Gary M Tarolli

Manan Patel

Robert J Stoll

Gentaro Hirota

Stewart Glenn Carlton

Jeffrey Scott Tuckey

Cynthia Allison

Scott Ricketts

Praveen Kaushik

Ming Liang Milton Lei

Jeffery Michael Schottmiller

Peter Nelson

Meenaradchagan Vishnu

Matthew Brockmeyer

Pritha Ghoshal

A first instruction to load a first data into a first register file associated with a first subpartition unit is received. A second instruction to load the first data into a second register file associated with a second subpartition unit is received. The first instruction and the second instruction are coalesced into a first entry of a request coalescer based on instruction identifiers. The first entry is associated with the first data. Responsive to a determination that the first data is available in the cache, the first data is multicast from the cache to the first register file and the second register file.

Systems and methods for multicasting data

A hardware-based traversal coprocessor provides acceleration of tree traversal operations searching for intersections between primitives represented in a tree data structure and a ray. The primitives may include triangles used in generating a virtual scene. The hardware-based traversal coprocessor is configured to properly handle numerically challenging computations at or near edges and/or vertices of primitives and/or ensure that a single intersection is reported when a ray intersects a surface formed by primitives at or near edges and/or vertices of the primitives.

Watertight ray triangle intersection

One embodiment of the present invention includes techniques to decrease power consumption by reducing the number of redundant operations performed. In operation, a streamlining multiprocessor (SM) identifies uniform groups of threads that, when executed, apply the same deterministic operation to uniform sets of input operands. Within each uniform group of threads, the SM designates one thread as the anchor thread. The SM disables execution units assigned to all of the threads except the anchor thread. The anchor execution unit, assigned to the anchor thread, executes the operation on the uniform set of input operands. Subsequently, the SM sets the outputs of the non-anchor threads included in the uniform group of threads to equal the value of the anchor execution unit output.

Dynamically detecting uniformity and eliminating redundant computations to reduce power consumption

Techniques are provided for handling a trap encountered in a thread that is part of a thread array that is being executed in a plurality of execution units. In these techniques, a data structure with an identifier associated with the thread is updated to indicate that the trap occurred during the execution of the thread array. Also in these techniques, the execution units execute a trap handling routine that includes a context switch. The execution units perform this context switch for at least one of the execution units as part of the trap handling routine while allowing the remaining execution units to exit the trap handling routine before the context switch. One advantage of the disclosed techniques is that the trap handling routine operates efficiently in parallel processors.

Cooperative thread array granularity context switch during trap handling

A method, system and computer program product embodied on a computer-readable medium are provided for managing the execution of out-of-order instructions. The method includes the steps of receiving a plurality of instructions and identifying a subset of instructions in the plurality of instructions to be executed out-of-order.

System, method, and computer program product for managing out-of-order execution of program instructions

A system, method, and computer program product for warming a cache for a task launch is described. The method includes the steps of receiving a task data structure that defines a processing task, extracting information stored in a cache warming field of the task data structure, and, prior to executing the processing task, generating a cache warming instruction that is configured to load one or more entries of a cache storage with data fetched from a memory.

System, method, and computer program product for warming a cache for a task launch

Techniques are provided for restoring threads within a processing core. The techniques include, for a first thread group included in a plurality of thread groups, executing a context restore routine to restore from a memory a first portion of a context associated with the first thread group, determining whether the first thread group completed an assigned function, and, if the first thread group completed the assigned function, then exiting the context restore routine, or if the first thread group did not complete the assigned function, then executing one or more operations associated with a trap handler routine.

One embodiment of the present invention sets forth a technique for converting alpha values into pixel coverage masks. Geometric coverage is sampled at a number of 'real' sample positions within each pixel. Color and depth values are computed for each of these real samples. Fragment alpha values are used to determine an alpha coverage mask for the real samples and additional 'virtual' samples, in which the number of bits set in the mask bits is proportional to the alpha value. An alpha-to-coverage mode uses the virtual samples to increase the number of transparency levels for each pixel compared with using only real samples. The alpha-to-coverage mode may be used in conjunction with virtual coverage anti-aliasing to provide higher-quality transparency for rendering anti-aliased images.

Alpha-to-coverage using virtual samples

A streaming multiprocessor in a parallel processing subsystem processes atomic operations for multiple threads in a multi-threaded architecture. The streaming multiprocessor receives a request from a thread in a thread group to acquire access to a memory location in a lock-protected shared memory, and determines whether a address lock in a plurality of address locks is asserted, where the address lock is associated the memory location. If the address lock is asserted, then the streaming multiprocessor refuses the request. Otherwise, the streaming multiprocessor asserts the address lock, asserts a thread group lock in a plurality of thread group locks, where the thread group lock is associated with the thread group, and grants the request. One advantage of the disclosed techniques is that acquired locks are released when a thread is preempted. As a result, a preempted thread that has previously acquired a lock does not retain the lock indefinitely.

Approach for context switching of lock-bit protected memory

A system, method, and computer program product are provided for implementing a software-based scoreboarding mechanism. The method includes the steps of receiving a dependency barrier instruction that includes an immediate value and an identifier corresponding to a first register and, based on a comparison of the immediate value to the value stored in the first register, dispatching a subsequent instruction to at least a first processing unit of two or more processing units.

System, method, and computer program product for implementing software-based scoreboarding

A system, method, and computer program product are provided for scheduling interruptible hatches of instructions for execution by one or more functional units of a processor. The method includes the steps of receiving a batch of instructions that includes a plurality of instructions and dispatching at least one instruction from the batch of instructions to one or more functional units for execution. The method further includes the step of receiving an interrupt request that causes an interrupt routine to be dispatched to the one or more functional units prior to all instructions in the batch of instructions being dispatched to the one or more functional units. When the interrupt request is received, the method further includes the step of storing batch-level resources in a memory to resume execution of the batch of instructions once the interrupt routine has finished execution.

System and processor for implementing interruptible batches of instructions

Growing community of inventors

Austin, TX, United States of America

Robert Ohannessian