Apparatus and method for grouping texture cache requests
AssigneeNVIDIA U.S. Investment Company
InventorsWilliam G. Rivard, Emmett Michael Kilgariff
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A method and apparatus for grouping texture data to increase storage throughput. Texels are addressed and stored according to adjacency to enable retrieval of a plurality of texels (a cache entry) with only a single address space request. Individual texel position is then derived using a simple adjacency formula. The preferred method and apparatus are compatible with both tiled data and linear data storage formats.
Claims17
A computer graphics texel storage system for providing texels in response to texel requests, comprising:
- a storage unit, the storage unit storing a plurality of texels;
- an aggregation unit in electrical communication with the storage unit, the aggregation unit aggregating a plurality of texel requests;
- and
- a retrieving unit in electrical communication with the aggregation unit, the retrieving unit simultaneously retrieving a plurality of texels from the storage unit in response to an aggregated request received from the aggregation unit;
- wherein stored texture data likely to be requested is tagged.
A computer graphics texel storage system for providing texels in response to texel requests, comprising:
- a storage unit, the storage unit storing a plurality of texels;
- an aggregation unit in electrical communication with the storage unit, the aggregation unit aggregating a plurality of texel requests, wherein if at least two texel requests are sufficiently adjacent, the aggregation unit aggregates the at least two texel requests;
- and
- a retrieving unit in electrical communication with the aggregation unit, the retrieving unit simultaneously retrieving a plurality of texels from the storage unit in response to an aggregated request received from the aggregation unit.
A method of retrieving texture data entries from a storage unit for a graphics rendering system, comprising:
- receiving a plurality of texture data entry requests;
- aggregating the plurality of texture data entry requests to create an aggregated request;
- and
- simultaneously retrieving a plurality of texture data entries in response to the aggregated request by tagging stored texture data likely to be requested.
A method of retrieving texture data entries from a storage unit for a graphics rendering system, comprising:
- receiving a plurality of texture data entry requests;
- aggregating the plurality of texture data entry requests to create an aggregated request, wherein if at least two texture data entry requests are sufficiently adjacent, the at least two texture data entry requests are aggregated;
- and
- simultaneously retrieving a plurality of texture data entries in response to the aggregated request.
A computer graphics texture data storage system for providing texture data to a graphics rendering system, comprising:
- a first texture data cache having a first data access structure, the first data access structure being independent of a method for accessing data stored within the first texture data cache;
- and
- a second texture data cache having a second data access structure, the second data access structure being linked to a method for accessing data stored within the second texture data cache;
- wherein stored texture data likely to be requested is tagged.
A computer graphics texture data storage system for providing data to a graphics rendering system, comprising:
- a format conversion unit for converting received data from one graphics format to another, less storage-efficient graphics format;
- and
- a storage unit, wherein the format conversion unit forwards the data to the storage unit, the storage unit being adapted for tagging stored texture data likely to be requested.
A computer graphics texel storage system for providing texels in response to texel requests, comprising:
- a storage unit, the storage unit storing a plurality of texels;
- and
- a retrieving unit for simultaneously retrieving the plurality of texels from the storage unit in response to texel requests;
- wherein stored texels likely to be requested are tagged.
Method of retrieving texture data entries from a storage unit for a graphics rendering system, comprising:
- tagging stored texture data likely to be requested;
- receiving a plurality of texture data entry requests for the stored texture data;
- and
- simultaneously retrieving a plurality of texture data entries in response to the texture data entry requests utilizing the tagging.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.