Hardware Background Tile Generation
OwnerRaymond Chow, Yun Shon Lowinventors
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A graphics controller for animating a tiled background is described. The graphics controller includes a host interface for communicating with an external host CPU and a plurality of registers in communication with the host interface. Logic circuitry is configured to select between tile image data and main image data when passing pixel values to a display controller. The logic responds to values stored in the registers to for positioning the main image within the display. A method carried out by the graphics controller and a method for using the graphics controller are also described.
Claims18
A graphics controller, comprising:
- a host interface for communicating with an external host CPU;
- an image memory in communication with the host interface, the image memory being configured to store main image data and tile image data, the main image data defining a main image and the tile image data defining a tile image;
- a plurality of registers in communication with the host interface;
- and
- logic circuitry configured to select between the tile image data and the main image data when passing pixel values to a display controller, the logic circuitry generating a composite output image having the main image overlying a tiled background image containing multiple copies of the tile image.
A hardware-implemented method for generating a composite image from a main image and a tile image, the method comprising:
- receiving tile image data into an image buffer, the tile image data comprising a plurality of tile image pixel values that define a tile image;
- receiving main image data into the image buffer, the main image data comprising a plurality of main image pixel values defining a main image;
- receiving register values into a plurality of registers;
- determining whether a pixel to be painted to a display screen should be taken from the tile image data or the main image data, the determining being based at least in part on the register values;
- passing one of the tile image pixel values from the tile image data to the display screen when the pixel to be painted should be taken from the tile image data, the tile image pixel value being selected so that multiple copies of the tile image is generated in the display screen from the tile image data;
- and
- passing one of the main image pixel values from main image data to the display screen when the pixel to be painted should be taken from the main image data.
A method for causing a graphical controller to composite a main image over a tiled background image, the method comprising:
- writing tile image data to a frame buffer of the graphical controller;
- writing to registers of the graphical controllers, the registers defining a display mode and image parameters;
- and
- writing a value to an enable register, wherein the value written to the enable register causing the graphical controller to generate the tiled background image by repeating a tile image defined by the tile image data.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.