Selective Rasterization

• US 20150097857A1
• Filed: 10/07/2013
• Published: 04/09/2015
• Est. Priority Date: 10/07/2013
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Intel Corporation
• Original Assignee: Intel Corporation
• Inventors: Akenine-Moller, Tomas G., Munkberg, Carl J., Clarberg, Franz P.
• Granted Patent: US 9,659,393 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 345/619
• CPC Class Codes: G01R 19/0092 measuring current only all subgroups of G01R19/00 take precedence
• CPC Class Codes: G06T 11/40 Filling a planar surface by adding surface attributes, e.g. colour or texture
• CPC Class Codes: H02J 2207/40 adapted for charging from various sources, e.g. AC, DC or multivoltage
• CPC Class Codes: H02J 7/00 Circuit arrangements for charging or depolarising batteries or for supplying loads from batteries

Abstract

According to one embodiment, a given tile, made up of pixels or samples, may be of any shape, including a square shape. These pixels may contain colors, depths, stencil values, and other values. Each tile may be further augmented with a single bit, referred to herein as a render bit. In one embodiment, if the render bit is one, then everything is rendered as usual within the tile. However, if the render bit is zero, then nothing is rasterized to this tile and, correspondingly, depth tests, pixel shading, frame buffer accesses, and multi-sampled anti-aliasing (MSAA) resolves are not done for this tile. In other embodiments, some operations may be done nevertheless, but at least one operation is avoided based on the render bit. Of course, the render bits may be switched such that the bit zero indicates that everything should be rendered and the bit one indicates more limited rendering.

Claims

1. A method comprising:

electronically organizing pixels or samples into tiles; and

electronically indicating for each of a plurality of tiles, whether to complete all of a plurality of rasterization operations in a rasterizer or, alternatively, whether at least one operation in the rasterizer is to be omitted for a given tile.

2. The method of claim 1 including indicating whether to render a tile at all and including indicating before rasterization on a tile level.

3. The method of claim 2 including using content from the same tile in a previous frame in place of a tile in the current frame if rasterization of the tile is not to be done.

4. The method of claim 1 including using a bit associated with each tile for said indicating and using a hash of a render state to detect rendering changes in a tile.

5. The method of claim 4 including storing the indicating bit for a frame in a bitmask for use by the rasterizer.

6. The method of claim 1 including using hierarchical rasterization with a series of tile sizes.

7. The method of claim 6 including associating a bit for said indicating with one particular tile size in said series.

8. The method of claim 1 including rendering a position part of a vertex shader first and delaying vertex attribute shading.

9. The method of claim 8 including avoiding vertex attribute shading if an indicating bit indicates not to render the tile.

10. The method of claim 9 including checking all bits in tiles overlapping a bounding box before proceeding with vertex attribute shading if at least one bit indicates not to rasterize.

11. At least one non-transitory computer readable medium storing instructions executed to perform a sequence comprising:

electronically organizing pixels or samples into tiles; and

electronically indicating for each of a plurality of tiles, whether to complete all of a plurality of rasterization operations in a rasterizer or, alternatively, whether at least one operation in the rasterizer is to be omitted for a given tile.

12. The medium of claim 11, said sequence including indicating whether to render a tile at all and including indicating before rasterization on a tile level.

13. The medium of claim 12, said sequence including using content from the same tile in a previous frame in place of a tile in the current frame if rasterization of the tile is not to be done.

14. The medium of claim 11, said sequence including using a bit associated with each tile for said indicating and using a hash of a render state to detect rendering changes in a tile.

15. The medium of claim 14, said sequence including storing the indicating bit for a frame in a bitmask for use by the rasterizer.

16. The medium of claim 11, said sequence including using hierarchical rasterization with a series of tile sizes.

17. The medium of claim 16, said sequence including associating a bit for said indicating with one particular tile size in said series.

18. The medium of claim 11, said sequence including rendering a position part of a vertex shader first and delaying vertex attribute shading.

19. The medium of claim 18, said sequence including avoiding vertex attribute shading if an indicating bit indicates not to render the tile.

20. The medium of claim 19, said sequence including checking all bits in tiles overlapping a bounding box before proceeding with vertex attribute shading if at least one bit indicates not to rasterize.

21. An apparatus comprising:

a rasterizer to organize pixels or samples into tiles and to indicate for each of a plurality of tiles, whether to complete all of a plurality of rasterization operations or, alternatively, whether at least one rasterization operation is to be omitted for a given file; and

a buffer coupled to said rasterizer.

22. The apparatus of claim 21, said rasterizer to indicate whether to render a tile at all and including indicating before rasterization on a tile level.

23. The apparatus of claim 22, said rasterizer to use content from the same tile in a previous frame in place of a tile in the current frame if rasterization of the tile is not to be done.

24. The apparatus of claim 21, said rasterizer to use a bit associated with each tile for said indicating and using a hash of a render state to detect rendering changes in a tile.

25. The apparatus of claim 24, said rasterizer to store the indicating bit for a frame in a bitmask for use by the rasterizer.

26. The apparatus of claim 21, said rasterizer to use hierarchical rasterization with a series of tile sizes.

27. The apparatus of claim 26, said rasterizer to associate a bit for said indicating with one particular tile size in said series.

28. The apparatus of claim 21 including an operating system.

29. The apparatus of claim 21 including a battery.

30. The apparatus of claim 21 including firmware and a module to update said firmware.