Display system having floating point rasterization and floating point framebuffering

A computer system, comprising:

• a processor for performing geometric calculations on a plurality of vertices of a primitive;
• a rasterization circuit coupled to the processor that rasterizes the primitive according to a rasterization process which operates on a floating point format;
• a frame buffer coupled to the rasterization circuit for storing a plurality of color values;
• a display screen coupled to the frame buffer for displaying an image according to the color values stored in the frame buffer;
• a texture circuit coupled to the rasterization circuit that applies a texture to the primitive, wherein the texture is specified by floating point values;
• and
• a texture memory coupled to the texture circuit that stores a plurality of textures in floating point values.

A computer system, comprising:

• a processor for performing geometric calculations on a plurality of vertices of a primitive;
• a rasterization circuit coupled to the processor that rasterizes the primitive according to a rasterization process which operates on a floating point format;
• a frame buffer coupled to the rasterization circuit for storing a plurality of color values;
• and
• a display screen coupled to the frame buffer for displaying an image according to the color values stored in the frame buffer;
• wherein the floating point format is comprised of sixteen bits in a s10e5 format.

A computer system, comprising:

• a processor for performing geometric calculations on a plurality of vertices of a primitive;
• a rasterization circuit coupled to the processor that rasterizes the primitive according to a rasterization process which operates on a floating point format;
• a frame buffer coupled to the rasterization circuit for storing a plurality of color values;
• a display screen coupled to the frame buffer for displaying an image according to the color values stored in the frame buffer;
• and
• a fog circuit coupled to the rasterization circuit for performing a fog function, wherein the fog function operates on floating point color values.

A computer system, comprising:

• a processor for performing geometric calculations on a plurality of vertices of a primitive;
• a rasterization circuit coupled to the processor that rasterizes the primitive according to a rasterization process which operates on a floating point format;
• a frame buffer coupled to the rasterization circuit for storing a plurality of color values;
• a display screen coupled to the frame buffer for displaying an image according to the color values stored in the frame buffer;
• and
• a blender coupled to the rasterization circuit which blends floating point color values.

A computer system, comprising:

• a processor for performing geometric calculations on a plurality of vertices of a primitive;
• a rasterization circuit coupled to the processor that rasterizes the primitive according to a rasterization process which operates on a floating point format;
• a frame buffer coupled to the rasterization circuit for storing a plurality of color values;
• a display screen coupled to the frame buffer for displaying an image according to the color values stored in the frame buffer;
• and
• logic coupled to the rasterization circuit which performs per-fragment operations on floating point color values.

A computer system, comprising:

• a processor for performing geometric calculations on a plurality of vertices of a primitive;
• a rasterization circuit coupled to the processor that rasterizes the primitive according to a rasterization process which operates on a floating point format;
• a frame buffer coupled to the rasterization circuit for storing a plurality of color values;
• and
• a display screen coupled to the frame buffer for displaying an image according to the color values stored in the frame buffer;
• wherein the processor, the rasterization circuit, and the frame buffer are on a single semiconductor chip.

In a computer system, a method for rendering a three-dimensional image for display, comprising the steps of:

• performing geometric calculations on a plurality of vertices of a plurality of polygons;
• scan converting a plurality of pixels according to the vertices, wherein scan conversion is performed on floating point color values;
• applying a texture to the image by reading floating point texture values stored in a texture memory;
• simulating fog effects, wherein fog is simulated by modifying floating point color values;
• drawing the image for display on a display screen coupled to the computer system.

In a computer system, a method for operating on data stored in a frame buffer, comprised of:

• storing the data in the frame buffer in a floating point format;
• reading the data from the frame buffer in the floating point format;
• operating directly on the data in the floating point format;
• and
• writing the data to the frame buffer in the floating point format;
• wherein the steps of writing, storing, and reading the data in the frame buffer in the floating point format are further comprised of a specification of the floating point format, wherein the specification corresponds to a level of range and precision.

A computer system, comprising:

• a processor for performing geometric calculations on a plurality of vertices of a primitive;
• a rasterization circuit coupled to the processor that rasterizes the primitive according to a rasterization process which operates on an s10e5 floating point format;
• a frame buffer coupled to the rasterization circuit for storing a plurality of s10e5 floating point color values;
• a display screen coupled to the frame buffer for displaying an image according to the s10e5 color values stored in the frame buffer.