Intel Corporation

Nvidia Corporation

Telefonaktiebolaget Lm Ericsson (publ)

Tomas G Akenine-Moller

Jon N Hasselgren

Carl Jacob Munkberg

Jim K Nilsson

Robert M Toth

Franz Petrik Clarberg

Magnus Andersson

Prasoonkumar Surti

Bjorn Johnsson

Ingo Wald

Rasmus Barringer

Herman Hansson Soederlund

Karthik Vaidyanathan

Per Wennersten

Marco Salvi

Brent E Insko

Javier Carretero Casado

Pedro Marcuello

Jacob J Munkberg

Juan Fernandez

Alex Evans

Altug Koker

Subramaniam M Maiyuran

Michael Apodaca

Carsten Benthin

Peter L Doyle

Thomas A Piazza

Sven Woop

David J Cowperthwaite

Jim Rasmusson

Jacob Strom

Jakub Boksansky

Aditya S Yanamandra

Balaji Vembu

Jacob Ström

Guei-Yuan Lueh

Adam T Lake

Kun Tian

David M Puffer

Steven James Heinrich

Robert L Farrell

Saurabh Sharma

Aaron Eliot Lefohn

Michael Alan Fetterman

Rahul P Sathe

Bimal Poddar

Kalyan Kumar Bhiravabhatla

Ariel Berkovits

Michael Doggett

Carl Johan Gribel

Oli Wright

Paul A Johnson

Jim Kjell David Nilsson

Kevin Rogovin

Harri Syrja

Per Ganestam

Robert T Toth

Carl J Munkberg

Block compression schemes used for image compression are susceptible to generating image blocks having redundant bit sets (i.e. a redundant bit combination), where one of the bit sets in the block is not meaningfully different from the other bit set in the block. As a result, one of the bit sets will be meaningless to a decompression scheme used to decompress the image and thus will not contribute to improving a quality of the decompressed image. The present disclosure provides a technique to exploit redundant bit combinations in a compressed representation of an image, including to exploit more than just the simple case of bit sets that are identical. Exploiting a redundant bit combination will allow an otherwise meaningless bit set to be used for some other discriminating purpose, which can allow for a higher image quality after decompression.

Exploiting redundant bit combinations in a compressed representation of an image

One embodiment of a method for rendering one or more graphics images includes tracing one or more rays through a graphics scene; computing one or more surface normals associated with intersections of the one or more rays with one or more surfaces, where computing each surface normal includes: computing a plurality of intermediate surface normals associated with a plurality of adjacent voxels of a grid, and interpolating the plurality of intermediate surface normals; and rendering one or more graphics images based on the one or more surface normals.

Techniques for rendering signed distance functions

One embodiment of a method rendering one or more graphics images includes tracing a ray cone through a three-dimensional (3D) graphics scene, generating a refracted ray cone based on the ray cone and a two-dimensional (2D) coordinate frame, and rendering a graphics image based on the refracted ray cone.

Techniques for texture filtering using refracted ray cones

An apparatus and method for efficient ray tracing. For example, one embodiment of an apparatus comprises: a general purpose processor to generate a plurality of ray streams; a first hardware queue to receive the ray streams generated by the general purpose processor; a graphics processing unit (GPU) comprising a plurality of execution units (EUs) to process the ray streams from the first hardware queue; a second hardware queue to store graphics processing jobs submitted by the GPU; the general purpose processor to process the jobs submitted by the GPU and share results with the GPU.

Apparatus and method for optimized ray tracing

One embodiment of a method for rendering one or more graphics images includes tracing one or more rays through a graphics scene; storing one or more hit points based on one or more coordinate frames associated with one or more voxels of a grid, where the one or more rays intersect one or more surfaces of geometry in the one or more voxels; and rendering one or more graphics images based on the one or more hit points that are stored.

Techniques for avoiding self-intersections when rendering signed distance functions

Techniques are disclosed herein for interleaving textures. In the disclosed techniques, multiple textures that would otherwise be accessed separately are interleaved into a single, interleaved texture that can be used to access the multiple textures together. The interleaved texture can include alternating blocks from the multiple textures. The interleaved texture can be generated when the multiple textures are being loaded into memory. Further, the interleaved texture can be accessed using multiple texture headers that are associated with different textures in the interleaved texture. Each of texture headers includes a stride indicating the distance between two blocks from a same texture in the interleaved texture.

Techniques for interleaving textures

An apparatus and method are described for a non-uniform rasterizer. For example, one embodiment of an apparatus comprises: a graphics processor to process graphics data and render images using the graphics data; and a non-uniform rasterizer within the graphics processor to determine different resolutions to be used for different regions of an image, the non-uniform rasterizer to receive a plurality of polygons to be rasterized and to responsively rasterize the polygons in accordance with the different resolutions.

Apparatus and method for non-uniform frame buffer rasterization

A virtual reality apparatus and method are described for tile-based rendering. For example, one embodiment of an apparatus comprises: a set of on-chip geometry buffers including a first buffer to store geometry data, and a set of pointer buffers to store pointers to the geometry data; a tile-based immediate mode rendering (TBIMR) module to perform tile-based immediate mode rendering using geometry data and pointers stored within the set of on-chip geometry buffers; spill circuitry to determine when the on-chip geometry buffers are over-subscribed and responsively spill additional geometry data and/or pointers to an off-chip memory; and a prefetcher to start prefetching the geometry data from the off-chip memory as space becomes available within the on-chip geometry buffers, the TBIMR module to perform tile-based immediate mode rendering using the geometry data prefetched from the off-chip memory.

Apparatus and method for optimized tile-based rendering

One embodiment of a method for computing a texture color includes tracing a ray cone through a graphics scene, determining a curvature of a first surface within the graphics scene at a point where the ray cone hits the first surface based on differential barycentric coordinates associated with the point, determining, based on the curvature of the first surface, a width of the ray cone at a subsequent point where the ray cone hits a second surface within the graphics scene, and computing a texture color based on the width of the ray cone.

Techniques for ray cone tracing and texture filtering

A method for improving performance of generation of digitally represented graphics. The method comprises: receiving a first representation of a base primitive; providing a set of instructions associated with vertex position determination; executing said retrieved set of instructions on said first representation of said base primitive using bounded arithmetic for providing a second representation of said base primitive, and subjecting said second representation of said base primitive to a culling process. A corresponding apparatus and computer program product are also presented.

Method, apparatus, and computer program product for improved graphics performance

Growing community of inventors

Lund, Sweden

Tomas G Akenine-Moller