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AssigneeNVIDIA Corporation
InventorsEric B. LUM, Cass W. EVERITT, Henry Packard MORETON, Yury Y. URALSKY, Cyril CRASSIN, Jerome F. DULUK, Jr.
Estimating the term…
One embodiment sets forth a method for allocating memory to surfaces. A software application specifies surface data, including interleaving state data. Based on the interleaving state data, a surface access unit bloats addressees derived from discrete coordinates associated with the surface, creating a bloated virtual address space with a predictable pattern of addresses that do not correspond to data. Advantageously, by creating predictable regions of addresses that do not correspond to data, the software application program may configure the surface to share physical memory space with one or more other surfaces. In particular, the software application may map the virtual address space together with one or more virtual address spaces corresponding to complementary data patterns to the same physical base address. And, by overlapping the virtual address spaces onto the same pages in physical address space, the physical memory may be more densely packed than by using prior-art allocation techniques.
A method for allocating memory to surfaces, the method comprising:
A computer-readable storage medium including instructions that, when executed by a processing unit, cause the processing unit to allocate memory to surfaces by performing the steps of:
A system configured to allocate memory to surfaces, the system comprising:
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.