Computer graphics processing and selective visual display system – Computer graphics processing – Three-dimension
Reexamination Certificate
1998-03-31
2002-07-30
Zimmerman, Mark (Department: 2671)
Computer graphics processing and selective visual display system
Computer graphics processing
Three-dimension
Reexamination Certificate
active
06426746
ABSTRACT:
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates in general to the field of computer systems, and in particular, to an apparatus and method for performing multi-dimensional graphic transformations in an SIMD environment.
2. Description of Related Art
Due to high demands in multimedia applications, multi-dimensional graphic transformations are becoming popular, especially three-dimensional (3-D) graphic and image processing. Real-time applications such as animation, scientific visualization, image modeling, video game, typically require extremely fast computations. To meet such a high demand for computations, several parallel architectures have been developed.
Among these parallel architectures, the single instructions multiple data (SIMD) model has become popular recently. A typical SIMD model processes multiple data elements simultaneously. However, the coding of an SIMD machine to solve a 3-D transformations in graphics still presents a number of problems.
First, due to the limited number of registers in an SIMD processor, the manipulation of data usually involve memory-referencing instructions, which require many clock cycles for memory accesses. Second, pipelined functional units in SIMD architecture can have long latencies. Third, most current implementations of 3-D transformations only process one vertex at each iteration.
Therefore, there is a need in the technology for providing an apparatus and method to efficiently perform 3-D transformations in a pipelined SIMD environment.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
An apparatus and method for performing 3-D transformations using computer-implemented steps is described. The present invention discloses a method and apparatus for optimizing three-dimensional (3-D) transformation on N vertices of a data object based on a transformation matrix of size K×K. The method comprises: storing coordinates of the N vertices in K data items, each of the K data items having N elements; and scheduling a sequence of M operations with a set of P storage elements, the sequence of M operations performing a matrix multiplication of the transformation matrix with the K data items to produce transformed K data items, the set of P storage elements storing a plurality of intermediate results produced by the sequence of M operations.
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Abdallah Mohammad
Hsieh Hsien-Cheng E.
Blakely , Sokoloff, Taylor & Zafman LLP
Intel Corporation
Sealey Lance W.
Zimmerman Mark
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