Method and parallelizing geometric processing in a graphics rendering pipeline

Abstract

The geometric processing of an ordered sequence of graphics commands is distributed over a set of processors by the following steps. The sequence of graphics commands is partitioned into an ordered set of N subsequences S . . . S , and an ordered set of N state vectors V . . . V is associated with said ordered set of subsequences S . . . S . A first phase of processing is performed on the set of processors whereby, for each given subsequence S in the set of subsequences S . . . S , state vector V is updated to represent state as if the graphics commands in subsequence S had been executed in sequential order. A second phase of the processing is performed whereby the components of each given state vector V in the set of state vectors V . . . V generated in the first phase is merged with corresponding components in the preceding state vectors V . . . V such that the state vector V represents state as if the graphics commands in subsequences S . . . S had been executed in sequential order. Finally, a third phase of processing is performed on the set of processors whereby, for each subsequence S in the set of subsequences S . . . S , geometry operations for subsequence S are performed using the state vector V generated in the second phase. In addition, in the third phase, geometry operations for subsequence S are performed using the state vector V . Advantageously, the present invention provides a mechanism that allows a large number of processors to work in parallel on the geometry operations of the three-dimensional rendering pipeline. Moreover, this high degree of parallelism is achieved with very little synchronization (one processor waiting from another) required, which results in increased performance over prior art graphics processing techniques.