IMAGE GENERATING APPARATUS, IMAGE GENERATING METHOD, AND IMAGE GENERATING INTEGRATED CIRCUIT

• US 20110267354A1
• Filed: 06/15/2010
• Published: 11/03/2011
• Est. Priority Date: 06/17/2009
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Sovereign Peak Ventures, LLC (Dominion Harbor Enterprises, LLC)
• Original Assignee: Panasonic Intellectual Property Management Co., Ltd. (Panasonic Holdings Corporation)
• Inventors: Ishibashi, Yudai
• Granted Patent: US 8,941,660 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 345/441
• CPC Class Codes: G06T 1/20 Processor architectures; Processor configuration, e.g. pipelining
• CPC Class Codes: G06T 11/40 Filling a planar surface by adding surface attributes, e.g. colour or texture
• CPC Class Codes: G06T 15/005 General purpose rendering architectures
• CPC Class Codes: G09G 2360/121 using a cache memory
• CPC Class Codes: G09G 5/363 Graphics controllers

Abstract

To provide an image generating apparatus which can reduce a calculation amount by effectively utilizing a cache resource.

The image generating apparatus (700) which generates a graphics image by rendering a polygon includes: a coordinate processing unit (130) configured to load, from a memory (200), coordinate data included in vertex data and perform coordinate transform on the loaded coordinate data; a determining unit (150) configured to determine whether or not the vertex is a rendering object, using the transformed coordinate data; a shape data cache (770) for storing shape data; a shape data processing unit (760) configured to load, from the memory (200), the shape data, and store the loaded shape data in said shape data cache (770) when both of following conditions are satisfied: the vertex is determined to be the rendering object; and the shape data is not yet stored in the shape data cache (770); and a polygon rendering processing unit (180) configured to render the polygon using the transformed coordinate data and the shape data.

Claims

1. An image generating apparatus which generates a graphics image by rendering a polygon, said image generating apparatus comprising:

a coordinate processing unit configured to load, from a memory, coordinate data indicating a position of a vertex of the polygon and perform coordinate transform on the loaded coordinate data to generate transformed coordinate data, the coordinate data being included in vertex data that indicates information of the vertex;

a determining unit configured to determine whether or not the polygon is a rendering object and generate a vertex list indicating the vertex of the polygon determined to be the rendering object, using the transformed coordinate data generated by said coordinate processing unit;

a shape data cache for storing shape data that is included in the vertex data and other than the coordinate data;

a shape data processing unit configured to load, from the memory, the shape data of the vertex indicated in the vertex list generated by said determining unit, and store the loaded shape data of the vertex in said shape data cache when the shape data of the vertex is not yet stored in said shape data cache; and

a polygon rendering processing unit configured to render the polygon using the transformed coordinate data generated by said coordinate processing unit and the shape data stored in said shape data cache.

2. The image generating apparatus according to claim 1,

wherein modified shape data generated by modifying the shape data is stored in said shape data cache, and

said shape data processing unit includes:

a shape data check unit configured to judge whether or not the modified shape data of the vertex indicated in the vertex list generated by said determining unit is already stored in said shape data cache;

a shape data loading unit configured to load the shape data of the vertex from the memory when said shape data check unit judges that the modified shape data is not yet stored; and

a shape data modifying unit configured to modify the shape data loaded by said shape data loading unit to generate the modified shape data, and store the resulting modified shape data into said shape data cache.

3. The image generating apparatus according to claim 2,

wherein said shape data cache includes a plurality of cache lines,

each of said cache lines includes:

a cache tag indicating an ID of the vertex;

a line memory for storing the modified shape data of the vertex indicated by said cache tag; and

a flag indicating whether or not the modified shape data stored in said line memory is valid,

said shape data check unit is configured to judge whether or not the ID of the vertex indicated in the vertex list is already stored in said cache tag corresponding to the flag indicating that the modified shape data is valid, and

said shape data loading unit is configured to load the shape data of the vertex from the memory when the shape data check unit judges that the ID of the vertex is not yet stored in said cache tag.

4. The image generating apparatus according to claim 1, further comprising

a coordinate data cache for storing transformed coordinate data generated by said coordinate processing unit,

wherein said determining unit is configured to determine whether or not the vertex indicated by the transformed coordinate data is a rendering object, using the transformed coordinate data stored in said coordinate data cache, when the transformed coordinate data is already stored in said coordinate data cache.

5. An image generating method of generating a graphics image by rendering a polygon, said image generating method comprising:

loading, from a memory, coordinate data indicating a position of a vertex of the polygon and performing coordinate transform on the loaded coordinate data to generate transformed coordinate data, the coordinate data being included in vertex data that indicates information of the vertex;

determining whether or not the polygon is a rendering object and generate a vertex list indicating the vertex of the polygon determined to be the rendering object, using the transformed coordinate data generated in said performing coordinate transform;

loading, from the memory, the shape data of the vertex indicated in the vertex list generated in said determining, and storing the loaded shape data of the vertex in a shape data cache for storing shape data that is included in the vertex data and other than the coordinate data when the shape data of the vertex is not yet stored in the shape data cache; and

rendering the polygon using the transformed coordinate data generated in said performing coordinate transform and the shape data stored in the shape data cache.

6. An image generating integrated circuit which generates a graphics image by rendering a polygon, said image generating integrated circuit comprising:

a coordinate processing unit configured to load, from a memory, coordinate data indicating a position of a vertex of the polygon and perform coordinate transform on the loaded coordinate data to generate transformed coordinate data, the coordinate data being included in vertex data that indicates information of the vertex;

a determining unit configured to determine whether or not the polygon is a rendering object and generate a vertex list indicating the vertex of the polygon determined to be the rendering object, using the transformed coordinate data generated by said coordinate processing unit;

a shape data cache for storing shape data that is included in the vertex data and other than the coordinate data;

a shape data processing unit configured to load, from the memory, the shape data of the vertex indicated in the vertex list generated by said determining unit, and store the loaded shape data of the vertex in said shape data cache when the shape data of the vertex is not yet stored in said shape data cache; and

a polygon rendering processing unit configured to render the polygon using the transformed coordinate data generated by said coordinate processing unit and the shape data stored in said shape data cache.