Volume rendering integrated circuit

摘要

A volume rendering integrated circuit includes a plurality of interconnected pipelines having stages operating in parallel. The stages of the pipelines are interconnected in a ring, with data being passed in only one direction around the ring. The volume integrated circuit also includes a render controller for controlling the flow of volume data to and from the pipelines and for controlling rendering operations of the pipelines. The integrated circuit may further include interfaces for coupling the integrated circuit to various storage devices and to a host computer.