Technique for improving the performance of a tessellation pipeline

摘要

A tessellation pipeline includes an alpha phase and a beta phase. The alpha phase includes pre-tessellation processing stages, while the beta phase includes post-tessellation processing stages. A processing unit configured to implement a processing stage in the alpha phase stores input graphics data within a buffer and then copies over that buffer with output graphics data, thereby conserving memory resources. The processing unit may also copy output graphics data directly to a level 2 (L2) cache for beta phase processing by other tessellation pipelines, thereby avoiding the need for fixed function copy-out hardware.

主权项

1. A graphics subsystem configured to implement a graphics processing pipeline that includes a first set of processing stages and a second set of processing stages, the graphics subsystem comprising:
a first processing engine configured to:
retrieve graphics object data from a first memory unit;perform a first graphics processing operation on the graphics object data at a first processing stage included in the first set of processing stages to generate processed graphics object data;determine that the first processing stage is the final processing stage in the first set of processing stages;copy the processed graphics object data to a second memory unit that is accessible by one or more processing engines that are configured to implement the second set of processing stages;perform a second graphics processing operation on the processed graphics object data to generate reduced graphics object data; andcopy the reduced graphics object data to the first memory unit.