Method and mechanism for preempting control of a graphics pipeline
AssigneeNVIDIA Corporation
InventorAlbert Meixner
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A method of operating a graphics pipeline, a graphics processing unit and a GPU computing system are provided by this disclosure. In one embodiment, the graphics processing unit includes: (1) a processor configured to assist in operating the graphics processing unit and (2) a graphics pipeline coupled to the processor and including a programmable shader stage, the programmable shader stage configured to determine occurrence of a pipeline exception during execution of the graphics pipeline, initiate preempting the execution in response to determining the occurrence and initiate resolving the pipeline exception before execution is restarted.
Claims20
A graphics processing unit, comprising:
- a processor configured to assist in operating said graphics processing unit;
- and
- a graphics pipeline coupled to said processor and including a programmable shader stage, said programmable shader stage configured to determine occurrence of a pipeline exception during execution of said graphics pipeline, initiate preempting said execution in response to determining said occurrence and initiate resolving said pipeline exception before execution is restarted.
A method of operating a graphics pipeline of a graphics processing unit, comprising:
- receiving work at said graphics processing unit from a central processing unit associated therewith to be completed by said graphics pipeline;
- processing said work along said graphics pipeline;
- preempting said processing before completion of said work when determining occurrence of a pipeline exception;
- resolving said pipeline exception;
- and
- restarting said processing.
A GPU computing system, comprising:
- a central processing unit including a processor and associated with a memory;
- and
- a GPU having at least one fixed function graphics pipeline, said CPU configured to send work to said fixed function graphics pipeline from said application for processing, said fixed function graphics pipeline including a programmable shader stage configured to initiate preemption of said processing of said work along said fixed function graphics pipeline in response to determining occurrence of a pipeline exception.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.