US 9,959,590 B2 · System and method of caching for pixel synchronization-based graphics techniques

Abstract

Embodiment described herein combines a caching system with special cache flushing methods aimed at reducing thread divergence across a group of threads in a thread group, in order to synchronize branching paths taken by different threads executing on the same graphics processor execution unit, One embodiment provides for a graphics processing apparatus comprising graphics execution logic to execute one or more threads of a graphics shader program; an occluder cache to store input occluder node data for adaptive graphical effects logic of the graphics shader program; and compression logic to compress input occluder node data stored in the occluder cache. The occluder node data, in one embodiment, includes occlusion data for use with adaptive shadowing or transparency logic.

Claims20

Dependent claims

A graphics processing apparatus comprising:

graphics execution logic to execute one or more threads of a graphics shader program;
an occluder cache to store input occluder node data for adaptive graphical effects logic
of the graphics shader program;
compression logic to compress input occluder node data stored in the occlude cache in response to a cache flush event;
and
geometry shader logic to execute on the graphics execution logic, the geometry shader logic to trigger the cache flush event.

3 more elements

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.

System and method of caching for pixel synchronization-based graphics techniques

Life of this patent

System and method of caching for pixel synchronization-based graphics techniques

Life of this patent

Abstract

Claims20