Primitive processing in a graphics processing system
AssigneeImagination Technologies Limited
InventorJonathan Redshaw
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
A graphics processing system has a rendering space which is divided into tiles. Primitives within the tiles are processed to perform hidden surface removal and to apply texturing to the primitives. The graphics processing system includes a plurality of depth buffers, thereby allowing a processing module to process primitives of one tile by accessing one of the depth buffers while primitive identifiers of another, partially processed tile are stored in another one of the depth buffers. This allows the graphics processing system to have “multiple tiles in flight”, which can increase the efficiency of the graphics processing system.
Claims20
A graphics processing unit configured to use a rendering space which is sub-divided into tiles, the graphics processing unit comprising:
- a plurality of depth buffers, different ones of the depth buffers being associated with different tiles;
- a plurality of tag buffers, wherein there are more tag buffers than there are depth buffers;
- and
- a tag control module configured to dynamically associate each one of the depth buffers with a respective set of one or more of the tag buffers for processing a particular tile.
A method of processing primitives in a graphics processing system having a rendering space which is sub-divided into tiles, the graphics processing system comprising a plurality of depth buffers and a plurality of tag buffers, wherein the graphics processing system has more tag buffers than depth buffers, the method comprising dynamically associating each one of the depth buffers with a respective set of one or more of the tag buffers for processing a particular tile.
A non-transitory computer readable storage medium having stored thereon computer readable code that when processed configures a system to generate a graphics processing unit which is configured to use a rendering space which is sub-divided into tiles, the graphics processing unit comprising:
- a plurality of depth buffers, different ones of the depth buffers being associated with different tiles;
- a plurality of tag buffers, wherein there are more tag buffers than there are depth buffers;
- and
- a tag control module configured to dynamically associate each one of the depth buffers with a respective set of one or more of the tag buffers for processing a particular tile.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.