Sparse refresh of display
AssigneeIntel Corporation
InventorsThomas E. Willis, Steven L. Midford
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A method, apparatus, and signal-bearing medium for sending to a display device only those regions of the display screen that change. A frame buffer is divided into tiles, which may be composed of one or more regions, and data in the frame buffer represents pixels on the display screen. When data representing a pixel is modified in the frame buffer, the region or tile associated with the pixel is marked as dirty, and those tiles or regions that are dirty in the frame buffer are written to the display.
Claims25
A computer-implemented method, comprising:
- sparsely refreshing a display, wherein the refreshing includes,
- determining whether one region of a plurality of regions in a frame buffer has been modified, wherein the frame buffer comprises information to be displayed on the display, and wherein the determining includes using an entry for the region in a translation-lookaside buffer;
- and
- after the one region has been modified, copying only the one region from the frame buffer to the display, wherein before the one region is modified, the frame buffer has been divided into the plurality of regions.
An apparatus, comprising:
- a graphics engine to,
- determine a tile associated with a write command by interrogating a translation-lookaside buffer, wherein the write command is to write information to a frame buffer associated with a display, wherein before the determination, the frame buffer is divided into tiles;
- and
- set a state associated with the tile in the translation-lookaside buffer to be dirty, wherein the state is for use during a sparse refresh of the display.
A signal-bearing medium comprising instructions, wherein the instructions when read and executed by a processor comprise:
- performing a sparse refresh of a display including,
- determining whether a tile in a frame buffer is dirty, wherein the frame buffer comprises an image to be displayed on the display and the tile comprises a portion of the image, wherein before the determination, the frame buffer has been divided into tiles, and wherein the determining includes using an entry for the tile in a translation-lookaside buffer;
- and
- when the tile is dirty, writing the tile to the display.
An apparatus, comprising:
- a set-reset flip-flop including,
- a set input to be active when a region in a frame buffer is modified, wherein before the frame buffer is modified, the frame buffer has been divided into regions;
- and
- a reset input to be active while the region is being copied to a display, wherein the copying occurs during a sparse refresh of the display.
A signal-bearing medium bearing a data structure, comprising:
- an address translation field to include a mapping of pixels on a display to associated regions in a frame buffer;
- and
- a state field to indicate whether the regions in the frame buffer are clean or dirty, wherein the state is for use during a sparse refresh of the display.
A computing device, comprising:
- a graphics engine;
- a translation-lookaside buffer communicatively coupled to the graphics engine, wherein the translation-lookaside buffer is for tracking modified regions;
- a frame buffer communicatively coupled to the translation-lookaside buffer, wherein the frame buffer is used during a sparse refresh of a display;
- and
- logic communicatively coupled to the translation-lookaside buffer, wherein the logic includes,
- a set-reset flip-flop, including,
- a set input to be active when a region in a frame buffer is modified;
- and
- a reset input to be active while the region is being copied to the display;
- and
- a D-type flip-flop, including,
- a data input coupled to an output of the set-reset flip-flop;
- a clock input to be active when the reset input of the set-reset flip-flop is active;
- and
- an output to indicate when at least one pixel within the region has been modified but has not been written to the display.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.