Abstract: Various semiconductor chips and packages are disclosed. In one aspect, an apparatus is provided that includes a semiconductor chip that has a side, and plural conductive pillars on the side. Each of the conductive pillars includes a pillar portion that has an exposed shoulder facing away from the semiconductor chip. The shoulder provides a wetting surface to attract melted solder. The pillar portion has a first lateral dimension at the shoulder. A solder cap is positioned on the pillar portion. The solder cap has a second lateral dimension smaller than the first lateral dimension.

Abstract: Techniques for removing or identifying overlapping fragments in a fragment stream after z-culling are disclosed. The techniques include maintaining a first-in-first-out buffer that stores post-z-cull fragments. Each time a new fragment is received at the buffer, the screen position of the fragment is checked against all other fragments in the buffer. If the screen position of the fragment matches the screen position of a fragment in the buffer, then the fragment in the buffer is removed or marked as overlapping. If the screen position of the fragment does not match the screen position of any fragment in the buffer, then no modification is performed to fragments already in the buffer. In either case, he fragment is added to the buffer. The contents of the buffer are transmitted to the pixel shader for pixel shading at a later time.

Abstract: A system is described that includes an integrated circuit chip having a network-on-chip. The network-on-chip includes multiple routers arranged in a topology and a separate communication link coupled between each router and each of one or more neighboring routers of that router among the multiple routers in the topology. The integrated circuit chip also includes multiple nodes, each node coupled to a router of the multiple routers. When operating, a given router of the multiple routers keeps a record of operating states of some or all of the multiple routers and corresponding communication links. The given router then routes flits to destination nodes via one or more other routers of the multiple routers based at least in part on the operating states of the some or all of the multiple routers and the corresponding communication links.

Abstract: Described herein are techniques for generating a compiled shader program. The techniques include identifying input features of a shader program, providing the identified input features of the shader program to a trained model for selecting compiler operation values for shader programs, receiving, as output from the trained model, a compiler operation value for the shader program, and generating a compiled shader program based on the compiler operation value for execution on one or more compute units.

Abstract: A technique for processing computer instructions is provided. The technique includes obtaining information for an instruction state memory entry for an instruction; identifying, for the instruction state memory entry, a slot in an instruction state memory having selectably powered rows and blocks, based on clustering criteria; and placing the instruction state memory entry into the identified slot.

Abstract: A processing device, which improves processing performance, is provided which comprises memory configured to store data and a processor, in communication with the memory. The processor is configured to receive tuning parameters, each having a numeric value, for executing a portion of a program on an identified hardware device and convert the numeric values of the tuning parameters to words. The processor is also configured to predict, using one or more machine language learning algorithms, which combination of the words to execute the portion of the program on the identified hardware device based on performance efficiency and convert the predicted combination of the words to corresponding numeric values for executing the portion of the program on the identified hardware device.

Abstract: Described herein are techniques for reducing control flow divergence. The method includes identifying two or more shader programs having commonalities, generating a merged shader program that implements functionality of the identified two or more shader programs, wherein the functionality implemented includes a first execution option for a first shader program of the two or more shader programs and a second execution option for a second shader program of the two or more shader programs, modifying shader programs that call the first shader program to instead call the merged shader program and select the first execution option, modifying shader programs that call the second shader program to instead call the merged shader program and select the second execution option.

Abstract: Disclosed herein are techniques for obtaining location data for a sensor fusion device. The techniques include transmitting or receiving a signal from or to the sensor fusion device. The techniques also include obtaining angle-based location data, based on the signal and on an angle-based location finding technique. The techniques also include determining location data for the sensor fusion device or an auxiliary device associated with the sensor fusion device, based on the angle-based location data.

Abstract: Methods, devices, and systems for transmitting data over a computer communications network are disclosed. A queue of communications commands can be pre-generated using a central processing unit (CPU) and stored in a device memory of a network interface controller (NIC). Thereafter, if a graphics processing unit (GPU) has data to communicate to a remote GPU, it can store the data in a send buffer, where the location in the buffer is pointed to by a pre-generated command. The GPU can then signal to the interface device that the data is ready, triggering execution of the pre-generated command to send the data.

Abstract: Security key identifier remapping includes associating a system-level security key identifier to a local-level identifier requiring fewer bits of storage space. The remapped security key identifiers are used to receive, at a first compute complex of a processing system, a memory access request including a memory address value and a system-level security key identifier. The compute complex responds to the memory access request based on a determination of whether a security key identifier map of the first compute complex includes a mapping of the system-level security key identifier to a local-level security key identifier. In response to determining that the security key identifier map of the first compute complex does not include a mapping of the system-level security key identifier to the local-level security key identifier, a cache miss message may be returned without probing caches of the first compute complex.

Abstract: A method includes receiving, from an origin computing node, a first communication addressed to multiple destination computing nodes in a processor interconnect fabric, measuring a first set of one or more communication metrics associated with a transmission path to one or more of the multiple destination computing nodes, and for each of the destination computing nodes, based on the set of communication metrics, selecting between a multicast transmission mode and unicast transmission mode as a transmission mode for transmitting the first communication to the destination computing node.

Abstract: A method includes storing a first portion of a sparse triangular matrix in a local memory and launching a kernel for executing a set of workgroups. The first portion includes a plurality of row blocks, and each workgroup in the set of workgroups is associated with one of the plurality of row blocks. The method also includes, for each workgroup in the set of workgroups, solving the row block. The row block is solved by, for each row segment of a first subset of row segments in the row block, calculating a partial sum for the row segment based on one or more matrix elements in the row segment, and writing the partial sum to a remote memory of a first remote processing unit prior to terminating the kernel.

Abstract: Various chip stacks and methods and structures of interconnecting the same are disclosed. In one aspect, an apparatus is provided that includes a first semiconductor chip that has a first glass layer and plural first groups of plural conductor pads in the first glass layer. Each of the plural first groups of conductor pads is configured to bumplessly connect to a corresponding second group of plural conductor pads of a second semiconductor chip to make up a first interconnect of a plurality interconnects that connect the first semiconductor chip to the second semiconductor chip. The first glass layer is configured to bond to a second glass layer of the second semiconductor chip.

Abstract: Systems, apparatuses, and methods for implementing data recovery techniques for lossy wireless links are disclosed. A transmitter is configured to encode a video stream and wirelessly transmit the encoded video stream to a receiver, with the video stream representing a virtual reality (VR) rendered environment. The transmitter partitions the video stream into a plurality of substream components based on frequency. Motion vector parameters are calculated for the lowest frequency substream component of the video stream only, and the motion vector parameters are sent to the receiver using a low MCS level. When the receiver receives the motion vector parameters, but the receiver does not receive the lowest frequency component of a given chunk, the receiver uses the motion vector parameters to reconstruct the lowest frequency component of the given chunk by extrapolating from a corresponding chunk of the previous video frame.

Abstract: Described herein are a method, system and apparatus for mitigating motion sickness in a virtual reality (VR) environment. In an implementation, the system and apparatus can include a VR controller board, a processor and a VII headset. In an implementation, the processor and VR headset are an integrated device. In general, the method includes capturing measurements using the VR controller board. The measurements are indicative of user directional movements in a physical environment relative to the VR environment. In an implementation, the measurements relate to changes in the location of the center of mass of the user relative to the VR controller board. The processor uses the measurements to determine predetermined actions in the VR environment. The predetermined actions are then executed in the VR environment nearly simultaneous with the user directional movements in the physical environment.

Abstract: Various die stacks and methods of creating the same are disclosed. In one aspect, a method of manufacturing is provided that includes mounting a first semiconductor die on a second semiconductor die of a first semiconductor wafer. The second semiconductor die is singulated from the first semiconductor wafer to yield a first die stack. The second semiconductor die of the first die stack is mounted on a third semiconductor die of a second semiconductor wafer. The third semiconductor die is singulated from the second semiconductor wafer to yield a second die stack. The second die stack is mounted on a fourth semiconductor die of a third semiconductor wafer.

Abstract: Systems, apparatuses, and methods for implementing a graphics processing unit (GPU) coprocessor are disclosed. The GPU coprocessor includes a SIMD unit with the ability to self-schedule sub-wave procedures based on input data flow events. A host processor sends messages targeting the GPU coprocessor to a queue. In response to detecting a first message in the queue, the GPU coprocessor schedules a first sub-task for execution. The GPU coprocessor includes an inter-lane crossbar and intra-lane biased indexing mechanism for a vector general purpose register (VGPR) file. The VGPR file is split into two files. The first VGPR file is a larger register file with one read port and one write port. The second VGPR file is a smaller register file with multiple read ports and one write port. The second VGPR introduces the ability to co-issue more than one instruction per clock cycle.

Abstract: Described herein is a technique for performing ray tracing. According to this technique, instead of executing intersection and/or any hit shaders during traversal of an acceleration structure to determine the closest hit for a ray, an acceleration structure is fully traversed in an invocation of a shader program, and the closest intersection with a triangle is recorded in a data structure associated with the material of the triangle. Later, a scheduler launches waves by grouping together multiple data items associated with the same material. The rays processed by that wave are processed with a continuation ray, rather than the full original ray. A continuation ray starts from the previous point of intersection and extends in the direction of the original ray. These steps help counter divergence that would occur if a single shader program that inlined the intersection and any hit shaders were executed.

Abstract: A processing unit includes a plurality of subsystem control modules. Each subsystem control module includes a set of one or more inputs that receives a set of one or more external signals and a set of one or more monitored outputs from a hardware subsystem corresponding to the subsystem control module, and a set of configuration outputs for controlling one or more configuration settings of the hardware subsystem. The subsystem control module determines the one or more configuration settings based on the set of monitored outputs and on one or more targets derived from the set of external signals.

Abstract: A state of a first architectural register in a processing system is changed from a first state to a second state that indicates that the first architectural register is to be monitored during speculative execution. A second architectural register in the processing system is associated with a third state in response to the first architectural register being a source register for a memory load instruction that loads data from a memory into the second architectural register during speculative execution. Use of data in the second architectural register is constrained during speculative operations while the second architectural register is in the third state. In some cases, a “set taint” instruction is executed to change the state of the first architectural register from the first state to the second state.