Polygon rendering on a stream architecture

ABSTRACT

The use of a programmable stream architecture in polygon rendering provides a powerful mechanism to address the high performance needs of today's complex scenes as well as the need for flexibility and programmability in the polygon rendering pipeline. We describe how a polygon rendering pipeline maps into data streams and kernels that operate on streams, and how this mapping is used to implement the polgyon rendering pipeline on Imagine, a programmable stream processor. We compare our results on a cycle-accurate simulation of Imagine to representative hardware and software renderers.

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INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  I. Computing Methodologies
  I.3 COMPUTER GRAPHICS
      I.3.1 Hardware architecture
          Subjects: Graphics processors

Additional Classification:
  C. Computer Systems Organization
  C.1 PROCESSOR ARCHITECTURES
      C.1.2 Multiple Data Stream Architectures (Multiprocessors)
          Subjects: Single-instruction-stream, multiple-data-stream processors (SIMD)

  I. Computing Methodologies
  I.3 COMPUTER GRAPHICS
      I.3.4 Graphics Utilities
          Subjects: Graphics editors

General Terms:
Design, Experimentation, Measurement, Performance, Theory

Keywords:
OpenGL, SIMD, graphics hardware, kernels, media processors, polygon rendering, stream architecture, stream processing, streams