Efficient tile-based rasterization
AssigneeVivante Corporation
InventorsAbdulkadir Utku Diril, Frido Garritsen
Life of this patent
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Abstract
An apparatus and method for rasterizing a primitive in a graphics system is disclosed in one example of the invention as including scanning a first row of tiles, one tile at a time, starting from a first point and scanning in a first direction. Immediately after scanning the first row of tiles, the method includes moving from the first point to a second point in an orthogonal direction relative to the first row. Immediately after moving from the first point to the second point, the method includes scanning a second row of tiles, one tile at a time, starting from the second point and scanning in the first direction. By scanning rows in the same direction immediately prior to and after moving from one row to another, cache utilization is improved.
Claims19
A method for rasterizing a primitive in a graphics system, the method comprising;
- scanning a first row of tiles, one tile at a time, starting from a first point and scanning in a first direction, wherein a tile comprises a block of pixels;
- scanning the first row of tiles, one tile at a time, starting from the first point and scanning in a second direction opposite the first direction;
- moving, immediately after scanning the first row of tiles in the second direction, from the first point to a second point in an orthogonal direction relative to the first row;
- scanning, immediately after moving from the first point to the second point, a second row of tiles, one tile at a time, starting from the second point and scanning in the second direction;
- and
- scanning the second row of tiles, one tile at a time, starting from the second point and scanning in the first direction.
A method for rasterizing a primitive in a graphics system, the method comprising;
- scanning a primitive, one row of tiles at a time, wherein the tiles comprise blocks of multiple pixels having corner pixels;
- evaluating the leading corner pixels of each tile as scanning progresses along a row to determine if the leading corner pixels are valid;
- and
- discontinuing scanning additional tiles in a row in the event the leading corner pixels are invalid.
A method for rasterizing a primitive in a graphics system, the method comprising;
- scanning a primitive, one row of tiles at a time, wherein each tile comprises a block of multiple pixels divided into quadrants, each quadrant comprising corner pixels;
- evaluating, as scanning progresses along a row, the leading corner pixels of the trailing quadrants of each tile prior to evaluating the leading quadrants to determine if the leading corner pixels of the trailing quadrants are valid;
- and
- omitting scanning of the leading quadrants in the event the leading corner pixels of the trailing quadrants are invalid.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.