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:
Jun. 02, 2009
Filed:
Mar. 15, 2008
Gordon Clyde Fossum, Austin, TX (US);
Stephen Joseph Schwinn, Lakeville, MN (US);
Matthew Ray Tubbs, Rochester, MN (US);
Gordon Clyde Fossum, Austin, TX (US);
Stephen Joseph Schwinn, Lakeville, MN (US);
Matthew Ray Tubbs, Rochester, MN (US);
International Business Machines Corporation, Armonk, NY (US);
Abstract
An approach to optimize specular highlight generation is presented. A single microprocessor instruction is used to generate an intensity value based upon a viewing angle value. An application stores a viewing angle value in an input register. When called, the 'intensity instruction' retrieves the viewing angle value from the input register, and calculates an intensity value using three distinct steps. In turn, the intensity instruction stores the intensity value in an output register for the application to retrieve and further process. In one embodiment, the invention may be implemented using PowerPC™ assembly and VMX™ or Altivec™ instructions. In this embodiment, the intensity instruction may be represented as a 'vspecefp' instruction, which stands for a “vector specular estimate floating point” instruction.