Multi-level texture caching for 3D graphics hardware

ABSTRACT

Traditional graphics hardware architectures implement what we call the push architecture for texture mapping. Local memory is dedicated to the accelerator for fast local retrieval of texture during rasterization, and the application is responsible for managing this memory. The push architecture has a bandwidth advantage, but disadvantages of limited texture capacity, escalation of accelerator memory requirements (and therefore cost), and poor memory utilization. The push architecture also requires the programmer to solve the bin- packing problem of managing accelerator memory each frame. More recently graphics hardware on PC-class machines has moved to an implementation of what we call the pull architecture. Texture is stored in system memory and downloaded by the accelerator as needed. The pull architecture has advantages of texture capacity, stems the escalation of accelerator memory requirements, and has good memory utilization. It also frees the programmer from accelerator texture memory management. However, the pull architecture suffers escalating requirements for bandwidth from main memory to the accelerator. In this paper we propose multi-level texture caching to provide the accelerator with the bandwidth advantages of the push architecture combined with the capacity advantages of the pull architecture. We have studied the feasibility of 2-level caching and found the following: (1) significant re-use of texture between frames; (2) L2 caching requires significantly less memory than the push architecture; (3) L2 caching requires significantly less bandwidth from host memory than the pull architecture; (4) L2 caching enables implementation of smaller L1 caches that would otherwise bandwidth-limit accelerators on the workloads in this paper. Results suggest that an L2 cache achieves the original advantage of the pull architecture --- stemming the growth of local texture memory --- while at the same time stemming the current explosion in demand for texture bandwidth between host memory and the accelerator.

REFERENCES

• 1: Kurt Akeley, Reality Engine graphics, Proceedings of the 20th annual conference on Computer graphics and interactive techniques, p.109-116, September 1993 [doi>10.1145/166117.166131]
• 2: James F. Blinn , Martin E. Newell, Texture and reflection in computer generated images, Communications of the ACM, v.19 n.10, p.542-547, Oct. 1976 [doi>10.1145/360349.360353]
• 3: IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications Staff, The Truth About Texture Mapping, IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications, v.10 n.2, p.78-83, March 1990 [doi>10.1109/38.50676]
• 4: Edwin Earl Catmull, A subdivision algorithm for computer display of curved surfaces., 1974
• 5: Franklin C. Crow, The aliasing problem in computer-synthesized shaded images., 1976
• 6: Franklin C. Crow, Summed-area tables for texture mapping, Proceedings of the 11th annual conference on Computer graphics and interactive techniques, p.207-212, January 1984
• 7: Michael F. Deering , Stephen A. Schlapp , Michael G. Lavelle, FBRAM: a new form of memory optimized for 3D graphics, Proceedings of the 21st annual conference on Computer graphics and interactive techniques, p.167-174, July 1994 [doi>10.1145/192161.192194]
• 8: Yannick Deville, A low-cost usage-based replacement algorithm for cache memories, ACM SIGARCH Computer Architecture News, v.18 n.4, p.52-58, Dec. 1990 [doi>10.1145/121973.121979]
• 9: Eliot A. Feibush , Marc Levoy , Robert L. Cook, Synthetic texturing using digital filters, Proceedings of the 7th annual conference on Computer graphics and interactive techniques, p.294-301, July 14-18, 1980, Seattle, Washington, United States
• 10: James D. Foley , Andries van Dam , Steven K. Feiner , John F. Hughes, Computer graphics: principles and practice (2nd ed.), Addison-Wesley Longman Publishing Co., Inc., Boston, MA, 1990
• 11: Ziyad S. Hakura , Anoop Gupta, The design and analysis of a cache architecture for texture mapping, Proceedings of the 24th annual international symposium on Computer architecture, p.108-120, June 01-04, 1997, Denver, Colorado, United States
• 12: P. S. Heckbert, Fundamentals of Texture Mapping and hnage Warping, Master's thesis, University of California at Berkeley, June 1989.
• 13: P. S. Heckbert and H. P. Moreton, "Interpolation for Polygon Texture Mapping and Shading." In David F. Rogers and Rae A. Eamsbaw, editors, State of the Art in Computer Graphics: Visualization and Modeling, pp. 101-111. Springer-Verlag, 1991.
• 14: B. Hook, "All 1 Want for Christmas '98 is a Hardware Accelerator that Doesn't Suck," Gam~ Developer Magazine, September 1997.
• 15: Kai Hwang , Faye A. Briggs, Computer Architecture and Parallel Processing, McGraw-Hill, Inc., New York, NY, 1990
• 16: Intel Corporation, Accelerated Graphics Port Interface Specification, Revision 1.0, Intel Corporation, t996.
• 17: John S. Montrym , Daniel R. Baum , David L. Dignam , Christopher J. Migdal, InfiniteReality: a real-time graphics system, Proceedings of the 24th annual conference on Computer graphics and interactive techniques, p.293-302, August 1997 [doi>10.1145/258734.258871]
• 18: David A. Patterson , John L. Hennessy, Computer architecture: a quantitative approach, Morgan Kaufmann Publishers Inc., San Francisco, CA, 1990
• 19: R. N. Ibbett , P. C. Capon, The development of the MU5 computer system, Communications of the ACM, v.21 n.1, p.13-24, Jan. 1978 [doi>10.1145/359327.359333]
• 20: D. Peachey, "Texture on Demand," unpublished manuscript, Pixar, San Rafael CA, 1990.
• 21: Thomas Porter , Tom Duff, Compositing digital images, Proceedings of the 11th annual conference on Computer graphics and interactive techniques, p.253-259, January 1984
• 22: Steven A. Przybylski, Cache and memory hierarchy design: a performance-directed approach, Morgan Kaufmann Publishers Inc., San Francisco, CA, 1990
• 23: Mark Segal , Carl Korobkin , Rolf van Widenfelt , Jim Foran , Paul Haeberli, Fast shadows and lighting effects using texture mapping, ACM SIGGRAPH Computer Graphics, v.26 n.2, p.249-252, July 1992
• 24: M. Shantz, D. Krasnov, A. Kibkalo, A. Subbotin, F. Xie, and T. Park, "Building Online Virtual Worlds," Graphicon-96, July 1-5 1996, GRAFO Computer Graphics Society, State Education Center, Saint Petersburg, Russia.
• 25: Abraham Silberschatz , James L. Peterson , Peter B. Galvin, Operating system concepts (3rd ed.), Addison-Wesley Longman Publishing Co., Inc., Boston, MA, 1991
• 26: Jay Torborg , James T. Kajiya, Talisman: commodity realtime 3D graphics for the PC, Proceedings of the 23rd annual conference on Computer graphics and interactive techniques, p.353-363, August 1996 [doi>10.1145/237170.237274]
• 27: Doug Voorhies, Nvidia Corporation, personal communication 1997.
• 28: Alan Watt , Mark Watt, Advanced animation and rendering techniques, ACM Press, New York, NY, 1991
• 29: Turner Whitted, An improved illumination model for shaded display, Communications of the ACM, v.23 n.6, p.343-349, June 1980 [doi>10.1145/358876.358882]
• 30: Stephanie Winner , Mike Kelley , Brent Pease , Bill Rivard , Alex Yen, Hardware accelerated rendering of antialiasing using a modified a-buffer algorithm, Proceedings of the 24th annual conference on Computer graphics and interactive techniques, p.307-316, August 1997 [doi>10.1145/258734.258872]
• 31: Lance Williams, Pyramidal parametrics, Proceedings of the 10th annual conference on Computer graphics and interactive techniques, p.1-11, July 25-29, 1983, Detroit, Michigan, United States

INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  I. Computing Methodologies
  I.3 COMPUTER GRAPHICS

Additional Classification:
  I. Computing Methodologies
  I.3 COMPUTER GRAPHICS