A low-power high performance polygon renderer for computer graphics

Abstract

Abstract. Polygon rasterization is one of the most computational and memory intensive operations in computer graphics. In this paper, we present a low-power, real-time hardware design for this task. The system is resolution-independent by configuring different numbers of render engines in a 2-dimensional array. Using an array configuration of 16 render engines for a 512 x 512-pixel display, a peak performance of up to 3.4 million Gouraud-shaded polygons/sec is achievable. Total power consumption, depending on the polygon throughput, ranges between 17 mW to 133 mW at 1.5 V operation. A format for transmitting polygon information is proposed at a typical bandwidth of 4 Mbps, suitable for wireless transmission. This screen and format configurable design has potential application in portable, wireless head-mounted displays for virtual reality systems.