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:
Apr. 18, 2023
Filed:
Sep. 24, 2020
Advanced Micro Devices, Inc., Santa Clara, CA (US);
Ati Technologies Ulc, Markham, CA;
Jan Henrik Achrenius, Santa Clara, CA (US);
Mika Tuomi, Santa Clara, CA (US);
Kiia Kallio, Santa Clara, CA (US);
Pazhani Pillai, Boxborough, MA (US);
Laurent Lefebvre, Markham, CA;
Advanced Micro Devices, Inc., Santa Clara, CA (US);
ATI Technologies ULC, Markham, CA;
Abstract
Systems, apparatuses, and methods for implementing a depth buffer pre-pass are disclosed. A rendering application uses a binning approach to render primitives of a virtual scene on a tile-by-tile basis, with each tile corresponding to a portion of the screen. The application causes a depth buffer pre-pass to be performed for the primitives of the tile before a pixel shader is invoked. During the depth buffer pre-pass, only the depth part of the virtual scene is rendered to determine which pixel samples are visible and which pixel samples are hidden. Then, the scene is redrawn, but the pixel samples that are hidden are not sent to the pixel shader. In cases where a relatively large percentage of primitives overlap, this technique increases the efficiency of the rendering application since pixel shading can be avoided for the pixel samples that are hidden.