Back to results
US 8,146,061 B2Granted
Systems and methods for graphics hardware design debugging and verification
AssigneeVIA Technologies, Inc.
InventorsJim Xu, Minjie Huang, Dong Zhou
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
Disclosed are systems and methods for debugging and analyzing graphics hardware designs. Hardware designs are represented by a software model implemented in a programming language. Graphics operations can be executed in the software model as well as in reference software models to allow a user to analyze the accuracy of a graphics hardware design and/or a device driver implementation.
Claims17
A system for debugging and verifying a graphics hardware design, comprising:
- a script engine configured to interpret a script representing graphics functions into commands;
- a script engine interface configured to translate the commands to a format that can be processed by a device driver;
- a graphics processing unit model corresponding to a hardware design of a graphics processing unit, the graphics processing unit model configured to execute the commands from the device driver and generate at least one graphics frame and debugging information;
- a debugger configured to allow for debugging capabilities of the graphics processing model;
- a reference runtime comprising an application programming interface for graphics operations;
- a reference software driver coupled to the reference runtime and configured to process the commands processed by the reference runtime within the graphics processing unit model, wherein the graphics processing unit model is configured to generate at least one reference driver graphics frame corresponding to graphics functions within the script;
- a reference rasterizer, wherein the system is configured to execute the commands within the reference runtime and the reference rasterizer, the reference rasterizer configured to generate at least one reference graphics frame;
- and
- wherein the script engine allows a user to compare at least two of:
- the at least one graphics frame, the at least one reference graphics frame, and the at least one reference driver graphics frame.
7 more elements
A method of debugging and verifying a graphics hardware design, comprising the steps of:
- interpreting a script representing graphics functions;
- translating the script into commands;
- processing the commands within the device driver and a graphics processing unit model representing a graphics hardware design;
- processing the commands within a reference runtime and a reference software driver and the graphics processing unit model;
- processing the commands within the reference runtime and a reference rasterizer;
- generating at least one frame, at least one reference driver frame, and at least one reference frame, all corresponding to the commands within the script;
- allowing the comparison of at least two of:
- the at least one reference frame, the at least one reference driver frame and the at least one frame;
- and
- allowing an analysis based on the result of the comparing step of at least one of:
- the graphics hardware design and a design of a software graphics driver.
8 more elements
A system for debugging and verifying a graphics hardware design, comprising:
- a script engine configured to execute a script comprising commands that represent graphics functions, the script engine configured to execute the commands according to plural execution pathways;
- a first of the plural execution pathways comprising a script engine interface, a device driver, and a graphics processing unit module, the first of the plural execution pathways configured to process the commands to generate an image;
- a second of the plural execution pathways comprising a reference runtime, a reference software driver, and the graphics processing unit module, the second of the plural execution pathways configured to process the commands to generate a reference driver image;
- and
- a third of the plural execution pathways comprising the reference runtime and a reference rasterizer, the third of the plural execution pathways configured to process the commands to generate a reference image;
- and
- a user interface, wherein the script engine in cooperation with the user interface allows a user to compare at least two of:
- the image, the reference image, and the reference driver image.
5 more elements
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.