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US 11,107,269 B2Granted
Enhancing hierarchical depth buffer culling efficiency via mask accumulation
AssigneeIntel Corporation
InventorsSaikat Mandal, Vasanth Ranganathan
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Abstract
Embodiments described herein provide for a technique to improve the culling efficiency of coarse depth testing. One embodiment provides for a graphics processor that includes a depth pipeline that is configured to perform a method to track a history of source fragments that are tested against a destination tile. When a combination of partial fragments sum to full coverage, the most conservative source far depth value is used instead of the previous destination far depth value.
Claims20
A graphics processor comprising:
- a graphics processor pipeline including a depth pipeline, wherein the depth pipeline includes:
- a cache to store coarse depth data;
- a history buffer to store depth parameters for a plurality of fragments processed for a destination pixel tile associated with the coarse depth data;
- and
- one or more hardware logic units to:
- summate elements of an entry in the history buffer with elements in a set of depth parameters output from a coarse depth test of an input fragment relative to the destination pixel tile, the summated elements including a summated source coverage mask;
- determine if the summated source coverage mask indicates full coverage for the destination pixel tile;
- and
- set a destination far depth value for the destination pixel tile to a source far depth value within the summated elements in response to a determination that the summated source coverage mask indicates full coverage for the destination pixel tile.
6 more elements
A method comprising:
- on a graphics processor including a depth pipeline:
- performing a coarse depth test on a source fragment against a destination pixel tile to generate a set of depth parameters;
- reading a history buffer entry including stored depth parameters for a previous source fragment processed for the destination pixel tile;
- summating elements of the history buffer entry with corresponding elements in the set of depth parameters, the summated elements including a summated source coverage mask;
- determining if the summated source coverage mask indicates full coverage for the destination pixel tile;
- and
- setting a destination far depth value for the destination pixel tile to a source far depth value within the summated elements in response to a determination that the summated source coverage mask indicates full coverage for the destination pixel tile.
4 more elements
A data processing system comprising:
- a plurality of tiles of processing engines vertically stacked on a substrate, wherein one or more of the plurality of tiles of processing engines include a graphics processor pipeline including a depth pipeline, wherein the depth pipeline includes:
- a cache to store coarse depth data;
- a history buffer to store depth parameters for a plurality of fragments processed for a destination pixel tile associated with the coarse depth data;
- and
- one or more hardware logic units to:
- summate elements of an entry in the history buffer with elements in a set of depth parameters output from a coarse depth test of an input fragment relative to the destination pixel tile, the summated elements including a summated source coverage mask;
- determine if the summated source coverage mask indicates full coverage for the destination pixel tile;
- and
- set a destination far depth value for the destination pixel tile to a source far depth value within the summated elements in response to a determination that the summated source coverage mask indicates full coverage for the destination pixel tile.
6 more elements
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.