Pc-based computing systems employing a bridge chip having a routing unit for distributing geometrical data and graphics commands to parallelized gpu-driven pipeline cores supported on a plurality of graphics cards and said bridge chip during the running of a graphics application

Abstract

A PC-based computing system employing a bridge chip with a routing unit to distribute geometrical data and graphics commands to multiple GPU-driven pipeline cores supported on a plurality of graphics cards and the bridge chip. The PC-based computing system includes system memory for storing software graphics applications, software drivers and graphics libraries, and an operating system (OS), stored in the system memory, and a central processing unit (CPU) supported on a motherboard, for executing the OS, graphics applications, drivers and graphics libraries. The routing unit in the bridge chip interfaces with the CPU and the GPU-driven pipeline cores. During the generation and display of each frame of pixel data, the routing unit (i) routes the stream of geometrical data and graphic commands from the graphics application to one or more of the GPU-driven pipeline cores, and (ii) routes pixel data output from one or more of GPU-driven pipeline cores during the composition of frames of pixel data corresponding to final images for display on the display surface.