Layered texture compression architecture
AssigneeMicrosoft Corporation
InventorsYan Lu, John Tardif, Matt Bronder, Huifeng Shen, Feng Wu, Shipeng Li
Life of this patent
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Abstract
Various technologies for a layered texture compression architecture. In one implementation, the layered texture compression architecture may include a texture consumption pipeline. The texture compression pipeline may include a processor, memory devices, and textures compressed at varying ratios of compression. The textures within the pipeline may be compressed at ratios in accordance with characteristics of the devices in the pipeline that contains and processes the textures.
Claims16
A system for layered texture compression, comprising:
- a texture cache used by a graphics processing unit (GPU) for texture mapping and containing a texture compressed in an index-based compression format, the texture compressed in the index-based compression format comprising color information and index information indexing the color information;
- system memory, connected with the texture cache, containing the texture compressed in an intermediate compression format that is compressed on top of the index-based compression format, wherein the color information and the index information are compressed in the intermediate compression format;
- a peripheral storage, connected with the system memory, containing the texture compressed in a storage compression format that is compressed on top of the intermediate compression format;
- and
- the GPU processing the texture from the texture cache in the index-based compression format.
A method for layered texture compression, comprising:
- compressing a texture into an intermediate compression format on top of an index-based compression format, the intermediate compression format including compression of color information and index information of the texture;
- compressing the texture into a storage compression format on top of the intermediate compression format;
- and
- compressing alpha-channel information using at least:
- 4×4 integer transform;
- or
- quantization of transformation coefficients.
A method for decompressing texture data, the method comprising:
- accessing textures stored in system random access memory (RAM) of a system, the textures in the system RAM in an intermediate storage format that has been compressed on top of an index-based compression format, the system comprising:
- a graphics processor unit (GPU), the system RAM, non-volatile storage connected with the system RAM via a first decoder, and a texture cache connected with the GPU and connected with the system RAM via a second decoder, the non-volatile storage storing the textures in a storage compression format that has been compressed on top of the intermediate storage format;
- decompressing the textures, by the first decoder, from the storage compression format into the intermediate compression format and storing the textures in the intermediate compression format in the system RAM;
- and
- decompressing, by the second decoder, the textures from the system RAM into an index-based compression format from the intermediate compression format and storing the textures in the index-based compression format in the texture cache.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.