Abstract: A texture unit may be used utilized to perform general purpose mathematical computations such as dot products. This enables some general purpose computations and operations to be offloaded from a central processing unit to the texture unit. The texture unit may use linear interpolators in order to perform the dot product calculations.

Abstract: In some embodiments, the invention involves utilizing a tree merge sort in a platform to minimize cache reads/writes when sorting large amounts of data. An embodiment uses blocks of pre-sorted data residing in “leaf nodes” residing in memory storage. A pre-sorted block of data from each leaf node is read from memory and stored in faster cache memory. A tree merge sort is performed on the nodes that are cache resident until a block of data migrates to a root node. Sorted blocks reaching the root node are written to memory storage in an output list until all pre-sorted data blocks have been moved to cache and merged upward to the root. The completed output list in memory storage is a list of the fully sorted data. Other embodiments are described and claimed.

Abstract: An interpolation unit, such as may be found in a texture unit or texture sampler, may be used utilized to perform general purpose mathematical computations such as dot products. This enables some general purpose computations and operations to be offloaded from a central processing unit to an interpolation unit. The interpolation unit may use linear interpolators in order to perform the dot product calculations.

Abstract: Methods and systems to determine view cell occlusion, including to project objects of a 3-dimensional graphics environment to a 2-dimensional image plane with respect to the view point, to reduce sizes of corresponding object images, to generate an occluder map from the reduced-size object images, to compare at least a portion of the object images to the occluder map, and to identify an object as occluded with respect to the view cell when pixel depth values of the object image are greater than corresponding pixel depth values of the occluder map. Methods and systems to reduce an object image size include methods and systems to nullify pixel depth values within a radius of an edge pixel, and to determine the radius as a distance from the edge pixel to a second pixel so that a line between the view point and the second pixel is parallel with one or more of a line and a plane that is tangential to a sphere enclosing the view cell and a point on the object that corresponds to the edge pixel.

Abstract: In one embodiment, a processor may include a vector unit to perform operations on multiple data elements responsive to a single instruction, and a control unit coupled to the vector unit to provide the data elements to the vector unit, where the control unit is to enable an atomic vector operation to be performed on at least some of the data elements responsive to a first vector instruction to be executed under a first mask and a second vector instruction to be executed under a second mask. Other embodiments are described and claimed.

Abstract: An extended TMU system of a graphics system is disclosed. The extended TMU system includes a novel parameter, which allows the texture mapping unit to obtain multiple samples, calculate a dot product for the multiple samples, and return a sample of a maximum dot product value, all in a single call. The extended TMU system speeds up the performance of a primitive operation essential to collision detection. Compared to other approaches, the extended TMU system reduce the amount of data transferred during the primitive computation between the core and the TMU by around 75%, and also improves the throughput between 10%-40% for three fundamental collision detection algorithms.

Abstract: One embodiment includes a method of pre-computing a support map which includes a run-time environment comprising at least one three dimensional convex body having a plurality of vertices on each of at least six sides, each side being divided into a predetermined number of sample regions. The embodiment includes determining, for each of at least six input directions, which of the plurality of vertices extends farthest from the body within each of the sample regions. The embodiment also includes storing resulting output data for each sample region in a memoization structure.

Abstract: A method for data embedding in a digital image under the constraint of a pre-specified upper bound value on the amount of change in the value of a property associated with the image. For compression tolerant data hiding in digital images, a property is selected in which the required information can be embedded. The property should be such that the value obtained from the property before and after a lossy compression does not change by a significant amount, and the change should be bounded. The property should be such that a property value as obtained from the image will not vary due to compression, but only due to malicious tampering. The value obtained from the property is stored so that the image can be verified. The complete image is considered in deciding whether to increase or decrease the property value in a particular region.

Abstract: A verification system for still images that embeds a watermark so that no visual artifacts are created in the images and thus maintains the visual quality of the image. The algorithm embeds information in an uncompressed image so as to later detect the alteration of the image, as well as the location of the alteration. The embedding of information into a source image is based on a defined mapping process. An image plane consists of macroblocks, which are themselves comprised of microblocks. A code is embedded corresponding to the value of this image property in each macroblock. The specific sequence of microblocks used for embedding this information in the watermarking image plane is a unique function of this property for the corresponding set of microblocks in the indexing image plane. This information can be later decoded from the stamped image. The watermark is embedded by combining the pixel values of the image with the watermark. The watermark is altered if the image is altered.