Abstract: A shader pipe texture filter utilizes a level one cache system as a primary method of storage but with the ability to have the level one cache system read and write to a level two cache system when necessary. The level one cache system communicates with the level two cache system via a wide channel memory bus. In addition, the level one cache system can be configured to support dual shader pipe texture filters while maintaining access to the level two cache system. A method utilizing a level one cache system as a primary method of storage with the ability to have the level one cache system read and write a level two cache system when necessary is also presented. In addition, level one cache systems can allocate a defined area of memory to be sharable amongst other resources.

Abstract: Each row of a row based shader engine comprises a shader pipe array, a texture filter, and a level one texture cache system. The shader pipe array accepts texture requests for a specified pixel from a resource and performs associated rendering calculations, outputting texel data. The texture mapping unit receives texel data from a level one cache system and through formatting and bilinear filtering interpolations, generates a formatted bilinear result based on a specific pixel's corresponding four texels. Utilizing multiple rows of a row based shader engine within the shader engine allows for the parallel processing of multiple simultaneous resource requests. A method for texture filtering utilizing a row based shader engine is also presented.

Abstract: Apparatus and systems utilizing multiple shader engines where each shader engine comprises multiple rows of shader engine filters combined with level one and level two cache systems. Each unified shader engine filter comprises a shader pipe array, and a texture mapping unit with access to a level one cache system and a level two cache. The shader pipe array accepts texture requests for a specified pixel from a resource and performs associated rendering calculations, outputting texel data. The texture mapping unit retrieves texel data stored in a level one cache system, with the ability to read and write to and from a level two cache system, and through formatting and bilinear filtering interpolations generates a formatted bilinear result based on the specific pixel's neighboring texels. Utilizing multiple rows of shader engine filters within a shader engine allows for the parallel processing of multiple simultaneous resource requests.

Abstract: The embodiments of the present invention are a method and apparatus to perform anti-aliasing using multi-sampling on a non-power-of-two pixel grid. Using the present invention with 6 sample multisampling gives the same visual antialiasing quality as 8 samples using a prior art technique but uses less memory. A non-power-of-two equally spaced sample from a conventional grid of size N×N, where N is 12 can be chosen using the present invention. A scan conversion to determine the set of pixels covered by a polygon is performed in two parts. According to one embodiment, the present invention can multiply and divide by “N” in order to multisample an image using samples per pixel chosen from a N×N sub-sample grid, where “N” is not necessarily a power of 2. The present invention performs the divide by “N” step, where the step is achieved using a quick divide by 3 or 12 technique.

Abstract: A graphics system including a custom graphics and audio processor produces exciting 2D and 3D graphics and surround sound. The system includes a graphics and audio processor including a 3D graphics pipeline and an audio digital signal processor. The graphics processor includes an embedded frame buffer for storing frame data prior to sending the frame data to an external location, such as main memory. A copy pipeline is provided which converts the data from one format to another format prior to writing the data to the external location. The conversion may be from one RGB color format to another RGB color format, from one YUV format to another YUV format, from an RGB color format to a YUV color format, or from a YUV color format to an RGB color format. The formatted data is either transferred to a display buffer, for use by the video interface, or to a texture buffer, for use as a texture by the graphics pipeline in a subsequent rendering process.

Abstract: The present invention relates to a rasterizer interpolator. In one embodiment, a setup unit is used to distribute graphics primitive instructions to multiple parallel rasterizers. To increase efficiency, the setup unit calculates the polygon data and checks it against one or more tiles prior to distribution. An output screen is divided into a number of regions, with a number of assignment configurations possible for various number of rasterizer pipelines. For instance, the screen is sub-divided into four regions and one of four rasterizers is granted ownership of one quarter of the screen. To reduce time spent on processing empty times, a problem in prior art implementations, the present invention reduces empty tiles by the process of coarse grain tiling. This process occurs by a series of iterations performed in parallel. Each region undergoes an iterative calculation/tiling process where coverage of the primitive is deduced at a successively more detailed level.

Abstract: A graphics system including a custom graphics and audio processor produces exciting 2D and 3D graphics and surround sound. A relatively low chip-footprint, versatile texture environment (TEV) processing subsystem is implemented in a pipelined graphics system circulates computed color and alpha data over multiple texture blending/shading cycles (stages). The texture-environment subsystem combines per-vertex lighting, textures and constant (rasterized) colors to form computed pixel color prior to fogging and final pixel blending. Blending operations for color (RGB) and alpha components are independently processed by a single sub-blend unit that is reused over multiple processing stages to combine multiple textures.

Abstract: A graphics system including a custom graphics and audio processor produces exciting 2D and 3D graphics and surround sound. The system includes a graphics and audio processor including a 3D graphics pipeline and an audio digital signal processor. The graphics pipeline renders and prepares images for display at least in part in response to polygon vertex attribute data and texel color data stored as a texture images in an associated memory. An efficient texturing pipeline arrangement achieves a relatively low chip-footprint by utilizing a single texture coordinate/data processing unit that interleaves the processing of logical direct and indirect texture coordinate data and a texture lookup data feedback path for “recirculating” indirect texture lookup data retrieved from a single texture retrieval unit back to the texture coordinate/data processing unit.

Abstract: A graphics system including a custom graphics and audio processor produces exciting 2D and 3D graphics and surround sound. The system includes a graphics and audio processor including a 3D graphics pipeline and an audio digital signal processor. Emboss style effects are created using fully pipelined hardware including two distinct dot-product computation units that perform a scaled model view matrix multiply without requiring the Normal input vector and which also compute dot-products between the Binormal and Tangent vectors and a light direction vector in parallel. The resulting texture coordinate displacements are provided to texture mapping hardware that performs a texture mapping operation providing texture combining in one pass. The disclosed pipelined arrangement efficiently provides interesting embossed style image effects such as raised and lowered patterns on surfaces.

Abstract: A graphics system including a custom graphics and audio processor produces exciting 2D and 3D graphics and surround sound. The system includes a graphics and audio processor including a 3D graphics pipeline and an audio digital signal processor. Realistic looking surfaces on rendered images are generated by EMBM using an indirect-texture lookup to a “bump map” followed by an environment or light mapping. Apparatus and example methods for environment-mapped style of bump-mapping (EMBM) are provided that use a pre-completed bump-map texture accessed as an indirect texture along with pre-computed object surface normals (i.e., the Normal, Tangent and Binormal vectors) from each vertex of rendered polygons to effectively generate a new perturbed Normal vector per vertex.