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. 06, 2010
Filed:
Nov. 06, 2006
Steven E Molnar, Chapel Hill, NC (US);
Daniel P. Wilde, Cedar Park, TX (US);
Mark J. French, Raleigh, NC (US);
Robert J. Stoll, Los Altos, CA (US);
Steven E Molnar, Chapel Hill, NC (US);
Daniel P. Wilde, Cedar Park, TX (US);
Mark J. French, Raleigh, NC (US);
Robert J. Stoll, Los Altos, CA (US);
NVIDIA Corporation, Santa Clara, CA (US);
Abstract
One embodiment of the present invention sets forth a technique for improving graphics rendering efficiency by processing pixels in a compressed format whenever possible within a multi-sampling graphics pipeline. Each geometric primitive is rasterized into fragments, corresponding to screen space pixels covered at least partially by the geometric primitive. Fragment coverage represents the pixel area covered by the geometric primitive and determines the weighted contribution of a fragment color to the corresponding screen space pixel. Samples associated with a given fragment are called sibling samples and have the same color value. The property of sibling samples having the same color value is exploited to compress and process multiple samples, thereby reducing the size of the associated logic and the amount of data written to and read from the frame buffer.