Virtual memory based noise textures

A graphics system comprising:

• a physical memory region having a plurality of physical pages, wherein each physical page stores a pattern of noise texels;
• an address map adapted to store a mapping of a plurality of virtual pages in a virtual address space to a first physical page included in the plurality of physical pages, wherein the first physical page includes at least one noise texel included in the plurality of noise texels and multiple virtual addresses in the virtual address space are simultaneously mapped to the same physical address;
• and
• a graphics pipeline to render pixels using the noise texels and to provide the pixels to a display device.

A non-transitory computer-readable storage medium including instructions that, when executed by a processor, cause the processor to provide a noise texture by performing the steps of:

• storing noise texture data comprising a plurality of noise texels in a plurality of physical pages in physical memory;
• mapping, via a graphics processing unit, a plurality of virtual pages in a virtual address space to a first physical page included in the plurality of physical pages, wherein the first physical page includes at least one noise texel included in the plurality of noise texels and multiple virtual addresses in the virtual address space are simultaneously mapped to the same physical address;
• receiving a request for a noise texel identified by reference to a virtual address;
• translating, by reference to the mapping, the virtual address for the requested noise texel into a corresponding physical address;
• retrieving the requested noise texel from the physical memory using the physical address;
• and
• blending the retrieved noise texel with an attribute value of a pixel associated with an object to be rendered.