Techniques for interleaving surfaces

摘要

One embodiment sets forth a method for allocating memory to surfaces. A software application specifies surface data, including interleaving state data. Based on the interleaving state data, a surface access unit bloats addressees derived from discrete coordinates associated with the surface, creating a bloated virtual address space with a predictable pattern of addresses that do not correspond to data. Advantageously, by creating predictable regions of addresses that do not correspond to data, the software application program may configure the surface to share physical memory space with one or more other surfaces. In particular, the software application may map the virtual address space together with one or more virtual address spaces corresponding to complementary data patterns to the same physical base address. And, by overlapping the virtual address spaces onto the same pages in physical address space, the physical memory may be more densely packed than by using prior-art allocation techniques.

主权项

1. A method for allocating memory to surfaces, the method comprising:
receiving first surface data related to a first surface; receiving first surface interleaving state data related to the first surface; computing a first bloat based on the first surface interleaving state data; mapping the first surface data to a first surface virtual address space based on the first bloat; and mapping one or more pages included in the first surface virtual address space to a physical address space.