Atlasing and Virtual Surfaces

• US 20130067502A1
• Filed: 09/09/2011
• Published: 03/14/2013
• Est. Priority Date: 09/09/2011
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Blanco, Leonardo E., Moncayo, Silvana Patricia, Luo, Mary, Majid, Imran, Priestley, Joshua Warren, Constable, Benjamin C., Wood, Daniel N., McMullen, Max, Li, Hang, Gosalia, Anuj B., Antonijevic, Aleksandar
• Granted Patent: US 9,324,299 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 719/328
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/14 Digital output to display device ; Cooperation and interconnection of the display device with other functional units
• CPC Class Codes: G06T 11/40 Filling a planar surface by adding surface attributes, e.g. colour or texture
• CPC Class Codes: G09G 5/14 Display of multiple viewports
• CPC Class Codes: G09G 5/393 Arrangements for updating the contents of the bit-mapped memory
• CPC Class Codes: G09G 5/397 Arrangements specially adapted for transferring the contents of two or more bit-mapped memories to the screen simultaneously, e.g. for mixing or overlay G09G5/02 takes precedence

Abstract

Atlasing and virtual surface techniques are described. In one or more implementations, virtual surface functionality is exposed by an operating system for access by one or more applications of the computing device. A virtual surface is created in response to a request from the one or more applications to be used to render visuals for display by a display device. The virtual surface is allocated in memory of the computing device by the exposed virtual surface functionality to have an area that is larger than an area to be used to display the visuals from the one or more applications.

Claims

1. A method implemented by a computing device, the method comprising:

exposing virtual surface functionality by an operating system for access by one or more applications of the computing device; and

creating a virtual surface in response to a request from the one or more applications to be used to render visuals for display by a display device, the virtual surface allocated in memory of the computing device by the exposed virtual surface functionality to have an area that is larger than an area to be used to display the visuals from the one or more applications.

2. A method as described in claim 1, wherein:

the virtual surface is configured for access by a plurality of said applications; and

the virtual surface functionality includes an ability of specify an area of the virtual surface to be used by respective said application to render a visual in which that area is configured to restrict another said application from accessing the area to render visuals.

3. A method as described in claim 1, wherein the virtual surface is comprised of a plurality of logical surfaces, each being representative of individual surfaces including respective one or more visuals as specified by the one or more applications.

4. A method as described in claim 3, wherein the plurality of logical surfaces have a fixed size and are arranged in a fixed grid.

5. A method as described in claim 3, wherein the virtual surface functionality includes functionality to create, update, and delete the logical surfaces.

6. A method as described in claim 1, wherein the exposed virtual surface functionality includes functionality to break a surface of visual data received from the one or more applications into logical surfaces.

7. A method as described in claim 1, wherein the exposed virtual surface functionality includes functionality to render one or more of the logical surfaces before a request is received to display the one or more logical surfaces.

8. A method as described in claim 1, wherein the virtual surface, when initially created, is not backed by actual allocations from the one or more applications.

9. A method as described in claim 1, wherein the area specified by the application is to render a texture.

10. A computing device comprising one or more modules implemented at least partially in hardware and configured to implement an operating system to expose one or more applications programming interfaces for access by one or more applications to update visuals to be rendered for display by a display device, the application programming interfaces (APIs) including:

a begin draw application programming interface (API) that is configured to accept a size and offset of a portion of a logical surface that is to be updated;

a suspend draw application programming interface (API) that is configured to suspend an update that is to be performed for the portion of the logical surface;

a resume draw application programming interface (API) that is configured to access the portion of the logical surface from a suspended state; and

an end draw application programming interface (API) that is configured to indicate an end of the update to the operating system.

11. A comprising device as described in claim 10, wherein the operating system is configured to allocate and enforce the portion of the specified size in response to a call received via the begin draw API.

12. A comprising device as described in claim 11, wherein the operating system is configured to return an indication of an atlas surface and corresponding offset to be used to perform the update to the application.

13. A comprising device as described in claim 10, wherein the operating system is configured to enforce one active update at a time.

14. One or more computer-readable storage media comprising instructions stored thereon that, responsive to execution by a computing device, causes the computing device to implement an operating system that comprises:

an allocator module configured to manage distribution and positioning of logical surfaces inside of an atlas, each the logical surfaces configured to include one or visuals received from an application for rendering; and

an update manager module to manage allocation and reconciliation of updates, received from the application, with a surface allocation to be rendered for display by a display device.

15. One or more computer-readable storage media as described in claim 14, wherein the operating system is further configured to manage a virtual surface allocated in memory of the computing device to have an area that is larger than an area to be used to display the visuals from the application.

16. One or more computer-readable storage media as described in claim 14, wherein the update manager module is configured to perform synchronous or asynchronous updates to the surface allocation.

17. One or more computer-readable storage media as described in claim 14, wherein the allocator module is configured to manage the atlas using:

one or more dynamic blocks formed from one or more surfaces received from the application;

one or more dynamic rows in which each said dynamic row is a horizontal slice of the atlas that includes at least one said dynamic block;

one or more dynamic buckets in which each said dynamic bucket includes at least one said dynamic row; and

one or more dynamic pools in which each said dynamic pool includes at least one said dynamic bucket.

18. One or more computer-readable storage media as described in claim 17, wherein one or more dynamic rows have matching heights.

19. One or more computer-readable storage media as described in claim 17, wherein the update manager module is further configured to perform allocation, de-allocation, and compaction of the logical surfaces in memory of the computing device.

20. One or more computer-readable storage media as described in claim 17, wherein the update manger module exposes begin draw, suspend draw, resume draw, and end draw applications programming interfaces to the application.