Abstract: In accordance with some embodiments, the knowledge that a capped frame time is used can be exploited to reduce power consumption. Generally a capped frame time is a pre-allocated amount of time to apply power for rendering in graphics processing. Generally the frame time involves the application of power and some down time in which only idle power is applied pending the next frame time. By making better use of that down time, power consumption reductions can be achieved in some embodiments.

Abstract: A PCS culling technique may be augmented utilizing a motion blur (three-dimensional) rasterizer. The culling technique can be used for continuous collision detection.

Abstract: In one embodiment the table pointed to by visibility samples in Degradation Coverage-Based Anti-Aliasing is split up so that more values can fit (but each value uses fewer bits). This way, more values can be represented in a pixel, and this leads to better image quality in some embodiments. This also opens up the possibility of using as few as two values per pixel, whereas the CSAA uses four or more. Hence, this also saves bandwidth and therefore, also reduces power consumption in some embodiments.

Abstract: Pixel values that were computed in a previous frame may be reused for the current frame, operating in a sort-middle architecture. A hash or some other compact representation of all the data used in a tile, including all triangles, uniforms, textures, shaders, etc. is computed and stored for each tile. When rendering the next frame, that compact representation is once again computed for each tile. In a sort-middle architecture, there is a natural break point just before rasterization. At this break point, the compact representation may be compared to the compact representation computed in the previous frame for the same tile. If those compact representations are the same, then there is no need to render anything for this tile. Instead, the contents of the color buffer or other buffers of the previous frame of the tile may be moved to the same buffer of the tile for the current frame.

Abstract: First, the colors are partitioned within a tile into distinct groups, such that the variation of color within each group is lowered. Second, each group can be encoded in an efficient manner. The algorithm described herein may give a higher compression ratio than previous algorithms, and therefore may further reduce memory bandwidth at a very low increase in computational cost in some embodiments. The algorithm may be added to a system with existing buffer compression algorithms, handling additional tiles that the existing algorithm fails to compress, thereby increasing the overall compression rate.

Abstract: Cache thrashing or over-accessing of a cache can be reduced by reversing the order of traversal of a triangle on different granularities. In the case where triangles are not grouped, the traverse order may be reversed on each triangle. In cases where triangles are grouped, the traversal order may be reversed with each group change. However, when motion is excessive, for example beyond a threshold, then the traversal order reversal may be disabled.

Abstract: Techniques are described that can delay or even prevent use of memory to store triangles associated with tiles as well as processing resources associated with vertex shading and binning triangles. The techniques can also provide better load balancing among a set of cores, and hence provide better performance. A bounding volume is generated to represent a geometry group. Culling takes place to determine whether a geometry group is to have triangles rendered. Vertex shading and association of triangles with tiles can be performed across multiple cores in parallel. Processing resources are allocated for rasterizing tiles that have been vertex shaded and binned triangles over tiles that have yet to be vertex shaded and binned triangles. Rasterization of triangles of different tiles can be performed by multiple cores in parallel.

Abstract: Depth of field may be rasterized by culling half-space regions on a lens from which a triangle to be rendered is not visible. Then, inside tests are only performed on the remaining unculled half-space regions. Separating planes between the triangle to be rendered and the tile being processed can be used to define the half-space regions.

Abstract: Depth of field may be rasterized by culling half-space regions on a lens from which a triangle to be rendered is not visible. Then, inside tests are only performed on the remaining unculled half-space regions. Separating planes between the triangle to be rendered and the tile being processed can be used to define the half-space regions.

Abstract: In accordance with some embodiments, caching may be improved for tiles on shared edges between triangles. In some embodiments, the technique may be used for either color and depth caches or both caches.

Abstract: In accordance with some embodiments, in a sort last architecture, it is determined whether each of a plurality of portions of a screen display are constant from one frame to the next. A frame may be divided into tiles that may be rectangular regions of pixels. If the tiles are constant then the tile need not be sent to the display.

Abstract: A rasterizer, based on time-dependent edge equations, computes analytical visibility in order to render accurate motion blur. An oracle-based compression algorithm for the time intervals lowers the frame buffer requirements. High quality motion blurred scenes can be rendered using a rasterizer with rather low memory requirements. The resulting images may contain motion blur for both opaque and transparent objects.

Abstract: Motion blur rasterization may involve executing a first test for each plane of a tile frustum. The first test is a frustum plane versus moving bounding box overlap test where planes bounding a moving primitive are overlap tested against a screen tile frustum. According to a second test executed after the first test, for primitive edges against tile corners, the second test is a tile corner versus moving edge overlap test. The corners of the screen space tile are tested against a moving triangle edge in two-dimensional homogeneous space.

Abstract: When a tile is evicted from the cache, an attempt is made to compress the tile using any compression algorithm. The difference is that the colors of the tile are compressed as they are, but the colors can also be transformed with a color transform (for example, lossless YCoCg), and after that those colors are compressed with the same compression algorithm. Several different color transforms may be tried, and selection of which one to use can be done in several ways.

Abstract: Unlike a static primitive, where the depth function is planar, the depth function for a moving and defocused triangle is a rational function in time and the lens parameters. Compact depth functions can be used to design an efficient depth buffer compressor/decompressor, which significantly lowers total depth buffer bandwidth usage. In addition, this compressor/decompressor is substantially simpler in the number of operations needed to execute, which makes it more amenable for hardware implementation than previous methods.

Abstract: Real-time light field reconstruction for defocus blur may be used to handle the case of simultaneous defocus and motion blur. By carefully introducing a few approximations, a very efficient sheared reconstruction filter is derived, which produces high quality images even for a very low number of input samples in some embodiments. The algorithm may be temporally robust, and is about two orders of magnitude faster than previous work, making it suitable for both real-time rendering and as a post-processing pass for high quality rendering in some embodiments.

Abstract: A rasterizer, based on time-dependent edge equations, computes analytical visibility in order to render accurate motion blur. An oracle-based compression algorithm for the time intervals lowers the frame buffer requirements. High quality motion blurred scenes can be rendered using a rasterizer with rather low memory requirements. The resulting images may contain motion blur for both opaque and transparent objects.

Abstract: An importance map indicates, for each of a plurality of pixels, whether the pixel is considered important enough to be rendered. A hierarchical tree for pixels is created to generate a hierarchical importance map. The hierarchical importance map may be used to stop traversal of a primitive that does not overlap a pixel indicated to be important.

Abstract: Because using the same number of bits per residual depth offset compression is not the best distribution of bits, the bits per residual may be distributed instead according to the content of the depths of a tile. For example, if the depth differences close to the Zmax are small, then fewer bits can be spent on residuals for the samples that are encoded relative to Zmax. Consequently, more bits can be spent on the residuals for the samples that are encoded relative to Zmin. As a result, more tiles succeed at compressing to the required number of bits.

Abstract: In some embodiments, a given frame or picture may have different shading rates. In one embodiment in some areas of the frame or picture the shading rate may be less than once per pixel and in other places it may be once per pixel. An algorithm may be used to determine how the shading rate changes across the frame.