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:
Jul. 15, 2008
Filed:
Aug. 06, 2004
Robert W. Gimby, West Bloomfield, MI (US);
Henry Packard Moreton, Woodside, CA (US);
Thomas M. Ogletree, Lakeway, TX (US);
David C. Tannenbaum, Austin, TX (US);
Andrew D. Bowen, Austin, TX (US);
Christopher J. Goodman, Round Rock, TX (US);
Vimal Parikh, Fremont, CA (US);
Craig M. Wittenbrink, Palo Alto, CA (US);
Robert W. Gimby, West Bloomfield, MI (US);
Henry Packard Moreton, Woodside, CA (US);
Thomas M. Ogletree, Lakeway, TX (US);
David C. Tannenbaum, Austin, TX (US);
Andrew D. Bowen, Austin, TX (US);
Christopher J. Goodman, Round Rock, TX (US);
Vimal Parikh, Fremont, CA (US);
Craig M. Wittenbrink, Palo Alto, CA (US);
NVIDIA Corporation, Santa Clara, CA (US);
Abstract
The VPC unit and setup unit of a graphics processing subsystem perform culling operations. The VPC unit performs culling operations on geometric primitives falling within a specific criteria, such as having a property within of a numerical range limit. This limit reduces the complexity of the VPC unit. As increasing rendering complexity typically produces a large number of small primitives, the VPC unit culls many primitives despite its limitations. The VPC unit also includes a cache for storing previously processed vertices in their transformed form, along with previously computed culling information. This increases the VPC unit throughput by reducing the number of memory accesses and culling operations to be performed. The setup unit performs culling operations on any general primitive that cannot be culled by the VPC unit. By performing a first series of culling operations in the VPC unit, the processing burden on the setup unit is decreased.