ADAPTIVE SHADING IN A GRAPHICS PROCESSING PIPELINE

摘要

One embodiment of the present invention includes a parallel processing unit (PPU) that performs pixel shading at variable granularities. For effects that vary at a low frequency across a pixel block, a coarse shading unit performs the associated shading operations on a subset of the pixels in the pixel block. By contrast, for effects that vary at a high frequency across the pixel block, fine shading units perform the associated shading operations on each pixel in the pixel block. Because the PPU implements coarse shading units and fine shading units, the PPU may tune the shading rate per-effect based on the frequency of variation across each pixel group. By contrast, conventional PPUs typically compute all effects per-pixel, performing redundant shading operations for low frequency effects. Consequently, to produce similar image quality, the PPU consumes less power and increases the rendering frame rate compared to a conventional PPU.

主权项

1. A computer-implemented method for adaptively selecting coarse shading pixels, the method comprising:
receiving a pixel block visibility mask corresponding to a pixel block that includes a set of pixels; selecting a plurality of coarse shading pixels associated with a subset of the set of pixels, wherein the plurality of coarse shading pixels includes a first pixel but does not include a second pixel; performing a first pixel shading operation on each of the coarse shading pixels to calculate first coarse shading results; and performing one or more interpolation operations on the first coarse shading results to calculate a second coarse shading result that is associated with the second pixel.