Hardware acceleration for Window systems

ABSTRACT

Graphics pipelines are quickly evolving to support multitasking workstations. The driving force behind this evolution is the window system, which must provide high performance graphics within multiple windows, while maintaining interactivity. The virtual graphics system presented by [7] provides a clean solution to the problem of context switching graphics hardware between processes, but does not solve all the problems associated with sharing graphics pipelines.The primary difficulty in context switching a graphics accelerator is the pipeline latency encountered during a pipeline flush. This latency removes the responsiveness and interactivity of the graphics system. As primitives become more complex and pipelines become longer, pipeline latency grows. Hardware solutions are described which further accelerate the window system by eliminating the need for pipeline flushing and resynchronization. An overview of the entire system is presented, highlighting the hardware mechanisms which contribute to window acceleration.

REFERENCES

• 1: Kurt Akeley , Tom Jermoluk, High-performance polygon rendering, Proceedings of the 15th annual conference on Computer graphics and interactive techniques, p.239-246, June 1988
• 2: James D. Foley , Andries Van Dam, Fundamentals of interactive computer graphics, Addison-Wesley Longman Publishing Co., Inc., Boston, MA, 1982
• 3: William M. Newman , Robert F. Sproull, Principles of interactive computer graphics (2nd ed.), McGraw-Hill, Inc., New York, NY, 1979
• 4: Robert W. Scheifler , Jim Gettys, The X window system, ACM Transactions on Graphics (TOG), v.5 n.2, p.79-109, April 1986 [doi>10.1145/22949.24053]
• 5: Roger W. Swanson , Larry J. Thayer, A fast shaded-polygon renderer, Proceedings of the 13th annual conference on Computer graphics and interactive techniques, p.95-102, August 1986
• 6: John G. Torborg, A parallel processor architecture for graphics arithmetic operations, Proceedings of the 14th annual conference on Computer graphics and interactive techniques, p.197-204, August 1987
• 7: Douglas Voorhies , David Kirk , Olin Lathrop, Virtual graphics, Proceedings of the 15th annual conference on Computer graphics and interactive techniques, p.247-253, June 1988

INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  I. Computing Methodologies
  I.3 COMPUTER GRAPHICS
      I.3.1 Hardware architecture
          Subjects: Raster display devices

Additional Classification:
  I. Computing Methodologies
  I.3 COMPUTER GRAPHICS
      I.3.6 Methodology and Techniques
          Subjects: Interaction techniques

General Terms:
Design