The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Dec. 18, 2018
Filed:
Oct. 02, 2008
Franck R. Diard, Mountain View, CA (US);
Franck R. Diard, Mountain View, CA (US);
NVIDIA CORPORATION, Santa Clara, CA (US);
Abstract
One embodiment of the present invention sets forth a method for pre-computing Z-values using an IGPU and, subsequently, conveying these Z-values to a DGPU. The graphics driver partitions the display into rectangular M-by-N tiles of pixels. For each tile, the graphics driver generates a quad geometry that encompasses the corresponding pixels. For each image frame, the graphics driver configures the IGPU to generate and down-sample a Z-buffer, creating a coarse Z-texture that contains a Z-value for each tile. The graphics driver transfers the coarse Z-texture to the system memory and configures the DGPU to apply the coarse Z-texture to the quad geometries, thereby generating a coarse Z-buffer in which the M-by-N pixels included in each tile are assigned the Z-value for the particular tile. Among other things, this technique enables the IGPU to pre-compute Z-values for the DGPU without straining the system memory bandwidth or defeating the Z-buffer compression techniques used by the DGPU.