Method and apparatus for interleaved processing of direct and indirect texture coordinates in a graphics system

A hardware-accelerated recirculating programmable texture blender/shader arrangement circulates computed color and alpha data over multiple texture blending/shading cycles (stages) to provide multi-texturing and other effects. Up to sixteen independently programmable consecutive stages, forming a chain of blending operations, are supported for applying multiple textures to a single object in a single rendering pass.

Recirculating shade tree blender for a graphics system

An advantageous set of external interfaces for home video game platform provide modularity and expandability while maintaining and preserving the proprietary nature of the platform. A disk drive interface provides flexible communications with an internal disk drive. Various serial bus interfaces provide expandability and interconnectability with a variety of internal and external devices including, for example, flash memory, broadband adapters, modems, and various other devices. A 4-port game controller interface provides serial interconnectability with handheld game controllers and various other input/output device. Power supply, digital and analog audio/video connections, and parallel memory expansion connections are also provided.

External interfaces for a 3D graphics system

An interface for a graphics system includes simple yet powerful constructs that are easy for an application programmer to use and learn. Features include a unique vertex representation allowing the graphics pipeline to retain vertex state information and to mix indexed and direct vertex values and attributes; a projection matrix value set command; a display list call object command; and an embedded frame buffer clear/set command.

Graphics system interface

A graphics processing system is provided. The graphics processing system includes a front end module for receiving pixel data. A setup unit is coupled to the front end module and generates parameter coefficients. A raster unit is coupled to the setup unit and generates stepping information. A virtual texturing array engine textures and colors the pixel data based on the parameter coefficients and stepping information. Also provided is a pixel engine adapted for processing the textured and colored pixel data received from the virtual texturing array engine.

Graphics processing system having a virtual texturing array

A graphics accelerator pipeline including a combiner stage capable of producing output values during each clock interval of the pipeline which map a plurality of textures to a single pixel or an individual texture to two pixels.

Graphics pipeline selectively providing multiple pixels or multiple textures

A method and apparatus which includes a graphics accelerator, circuitry responsive to pixel texture coordinates to select texels and generate therefrom a texture value for any pixel the color of which is to be modified by a texture, a cache to hold texels for use by the circuitry to generate texture value for any pixel, a stage for buffering the acquisition of texel data, and control circuitry for controlling the acquisition of texture data, storing the texture data in the cache, and furnishing the texture data for blending with pixel data.

Texture caching arrangement for a computer graphics accelerator

A method and apparatus which includes a graphics accelerator, circuitry responsive to pixel texture coordinates to select texels and generate therefrom a texture value for any pixel the color of which is to be modified by a texture, and a cache for texels for use by the circuitry to generate texture value for any pixel

Gopal Solanki

Papers

Graphics pipeline selectively providing multiple pixels or multiple textures

Texture caching arrangement for a computer graphics accelerator

Texture cache for a computer graphics accelerator