Avoiding unnecessary uncovered texture fetches
AssigneeNVIDIA Corporation
InventorMark J. Kilgard
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
Systems and methods for avoiding unnecessary uncovered texture fetches may improve texture mapping performance. A shader program compiler performs data-flow analysis to determine if texture fetches may be required for pixels that are not covered by a graphics primitive fragment. A graphics driver then determines which texture maps do not require texels for uncovered neighbor pixels, dependent on texture filter mode information, thereby avoiding unnecessary uncovered texture fetches.
Claims20
A method of avoiding unnecessary texture fetches, comprising:
- performing data-flow analysis of a shader program to produce information identifying texture fetches needed to perform a subsequent computation, wherein the data-flow analysis works backward through the shader program to determine inputs needed to compute each shader program output without fetching texture data;
- enabling the texture fetches needed to perform a subsequent computation for uncovered pixels within a pixel group;
- and executing the shader program to produce an image and storing said image.
A method of avoiding unnecessary texture fetches, comprising:
- determining that first texture data is used to fetch second texture data;
- enabling texture fetches of the first texture data for uncovered pixels within a pixel group based on whether or not the first texture data is needed to fetch the second texture data, wherein an uncovered pixel is a pixel that is not intersected by a graphics primitive;
- and outputting and storing an image including the graphics primitive.
The method of clam 7, wherein a partial derivative evaluation is performed using the first texture data.
The method of clam 8, wherein the partial derivative evaluation is performed by computing a finite difference computation.
A system for performing graphics data processing, comprising:
- a graphics driver configured to determine whether or not texture data for uncovered pixels should be fetched from memory and produce configuration information for a shader program, wherein an uncovered pixel is a pixel that is not intersected by a graphics primitive;
- and
- a graphics processor configured to fetch texture data for uncovered pixels based on the configuration information.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.