Method and apparatus for compressed texture caching in a video graphics system

摘要

A method and apparatus for reducing memory bandwidth usage in video graphics texturing operations that utilizes caching of compressed textures is presented. Texture information for texturing operations is stored in a memory structure in a compressed format. When texture information is needed for a texturing operation, a local cache is first examined to determine if the texture information required for the texturing operation is present within the cache. If it is not, the texture information is retrieved from the memory in a compressed format and stored in the cache in the compressed format. The compressed texture information is then retrieved from the cache each time it is required for a texturing operation and decompressed prior to use in such texturing operations.