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US 7,623,136 B1Granted
Method and system for processing texture samples with programmable filter weights
AssigneeNVIDIA Corporation
InventorsWei-Chao Chen, Li-Yi Wei
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A texture unit of a graphics processing unit provides the ability to switch among different filter modes depending upon shader program instructions that are received by the texture unit. One filter mode has the capability to extract filter weights that have been specified in a received shader program instruction rather than calculating the weights within the texture unit itself.
Claims15
A texture unit configured to perform a texture filtering operation, the texture unit comprising:
- a switch;
- a memory receive interface coupled to a texture filter unit;
- and
- a weight calculator, also coupled to the texture filter unit, wherein:
- the switch switches from a first data path for the texture filter unit to receive one or more calculated filter weights to a second data path for the texture filter unit to receive one or more programmable filter weights based on a filter mode indicated by a shader program instruction received by the texture unit,
- the texture filter unit extracts a first programmable filter weight from the shader program instruction, wherein the first programmable filter weight corresponds to a first texel associated with a screen pixel mapped to a texture map,
- the memory receive interface fetches the first texel from the texture map, and
- the texture filter unit computes a first texture value for the screen pixel by applying the first programmable filter weight to the first texel.
5 more elements
A computing device configured to perform a texture filtering operation, the computing device comprising:
- a processing unit that includes a texture unit;
- and
- a local memory coupled to the processing unit containing a texture map, wherein the texture unit is configured to:
- receive a shader program instruction relating to a filter mode;
- switch from a first data path for receiving one or more calculated filter weights to a second data path for receiving one or more programmable filter weights based on the filter mode,
- extract a first programmable filter weight from the shader program instruction, wherein the first programmable filter weight corresponds to a first texel associated with a screen pixel mapped to a texture map,
- fetch the first texel from the texture map, and
- compute a first texture value for the screen pixel by applying the first programmable filter weight to the first texel.
5 more elements
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.