APPARATUS AND METHOD FOR EFFICIENT FRAME-TO-FRAME COHERENCY EXPLOITATION FOR SORT-LAST ARCHITECTURES

摘要

An apparatus and method are described for the frame-to-frame coherency algorithm for sort-last architecture. In one embodiment of the invention, if a tile of pixels is covered completely by one triangle from a static draw call in one frame, then that tile is marked with that draw call's identifier. For the next frame, if the same static draw call is drawn, the same tile will be visited, and if the draw call's fragment passes for all pixels, it indicates that tile will contain exactly the same pixel color values as the previous frame. Hence, there is no requirement to run the pixel shader for the tile of pixels, and the color values of the tile can instead be reused from the previous frame.

主权项

1. A method comprising:
storing an identifier associated with a tile of pixels; determining whether the tile of pixels is covered completely by a first static draw call in a first frame; and setting the identifier associated with the tile of pixels to an identifier associated with the first static draw call in response to a determination that the tile of pixels is covered completely by the triangle from the first static draw call in the first frame.