A Graphics System Architecture for Interactive Application-Specific Display Functions

England, Nick

doi:10.1109/mcg.1986.276612

Cited by 24 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 9 publications

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“…Pixar's CHAP [17] and the Ikonas [7] are early examples of finegrain SIMD processors, based on the AMD2903, user microcodable by skilled programmers. These machines operated in parallel on pixel and vertex components.…”

Section: Previous Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

A user-programmable vertex engine

Lindholm

Kilgard

Moreton

2001

Proceedings of the 28th Annual Conference on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques

220

125

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In this paper we describe the design, programming interface, and implementation of a very efficient user-programmable vertex engine. The vertex engine of NVIDIA's GeForce3 GPU evolved from a highly tuned fixed-function pipeline requiring considerable knowledge to program. Programs operate only on a stream of independent vertices traversing the pipe. Embedded in the broader fixed function pipeline, our approach preserves parallelism sacrificed by previous approaches. The programmer is presented with a straightforward programming model, which is supported by transparent multi-threading and bypassing to preserve parallelism and performance.In the remainder of the paper we discuss the motivation behind our design and contrast it with previous work. We present the programming model, the instruction set selection process, and details of the hardware implementation. Finally, we discuss important API design issues encountered when creating an interface to such a device. We close with thoughts about the future of programmable graphics devices.

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Section: Previous Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

A user-programmable vertex engine

Lindholm

Kilgard

Moreton

2001

Proceedings of the 28th Annual Conference on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques

220

125

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“…One approach connects frame buffer memory, display processors and graphics I/O devices to a shared high speed bus. [ 7] System Hardware and Functions…”

Section: Limitationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

A display system for the Stellar graphics supercomputer model GS1000

Apgar

Bersack

Mammen

1988

SIGGRAPH Comput. Graph.

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This paper describes a high performance display system that has been incorporated into the overall architecture of the Stellar Graphics Supercomputer Model GS1000. The display system is tightly coupled to the CPU, memory system and vector processing unit of this supercomputer, and is capable of rendering 150,000 shaded triangles/sec, and 600,000 short vectors/sec. The goal of the architecture is to share hardware resources between the CPU and display system and achieve a high bandwidth connection between them. This coupling of the display system and the processor, the architecture of the rendering processor, and the two ASIC~ that are used to implement the rendering processor are described.In addition, the display system architecture is contrasted to other approaches to high perfomaance graphics, and design trade-offs and possible extensions are described. The implementation of popular display algorithms on the architecture is discussed, and their performance specified. The reader is advised that Stellar Computer Inc. is seeking patent protection for work described in this paper.

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“…Usually it is coupled to the CPU by an ad-hoc protocol. Although current graphics hardware connects to a high-bandwidth internal bus, its interface still presents the old paradigm of a dedicated graphics display serving one application from the far end of a communications line [5]. Despite the graphics hardware holding considerable per-process drawing state information, there is rarely any state management design discipline or effective swapping mechanism present [7].…”

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confidence: 99%

Virtual graphics

Voorhies¹,

Kirk²,

Lathrop³

1988

Proceedings of the 15th Annual Conference on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques

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Graphics can be implemented as a virtual system resource.This abstraction appears to each application on a multiproeessing workstation as a dedicated rendering and display pipeline. A variety of simple mechanisms support the simultaneous display of different types of images and eliminate the need for low-level device driver software.They permit applications to embed graphics instructions directly in their code. The abstraction allows for cleaner software design, higher performance, and effective concurrent use of the display by several applications.

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A Graphics System Architecture for Interactive Application-Specific Display Functions

Cited by 24 publications

References 9 publications

A user-programmable vertex engine

A user-programmable vertex engine

A display system for the Stellar graphics supercomputer model GS1000

Virtual graphics

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