Evolving the real-time graphics pipeline for micropolygon rendering

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Abstract/Contents

Abstract
The modern real-time graphics pipeline is a versatile parallel architecture that accommodates a wide range of rendering techniques. The architecture is implemented by heavily optimized graphics processors (GPUs) that employ a mixture of application-programmable and fixed-function processing resources, yet its design lends itself to a simple programming model easily understood by non-expert programmers. A major goal of future graphics systems is rendering geometrically complex, film-quality scenes in real time. Unfortunately, current GPU implementations not only require additional compute capability to handle high-resolution surfaces represented by subpixel-area micropolygons, the fundamental graphics pipeline operations of surface tessellation, rasterization, and shading execute inefficiently under this advanced workload. This dissertation evolves the graphics pipeline architecture and its associated rendering algorithms to increase system efficiency when processing micropolygons. The proposed redesign extends the pipeline with a new parallel algorithm for high-quality, adaptive surface tessellation, making it possible to generate crack-free meshes that represent surfaces accurately, but without excessive numbers of micropolygons. It increases rasterization throughput using micropolygon-parallel processing and analyzes the cost of rasterizer support for motion blur and camera defocus. It also adds pipeline logic to detect and avoid redundant shading computations, reducing shading costs more than eight times. The resulting real-time micropolygon rendering pipeline architecture increases rendering efficiency and, due to its evolutionary nature, maintains the graphics pipeline's simple programming model and the throughput-optimized design of a GPU's programmable processing cores.

Description

Type of resource text
Form electronic; electronic resource; remote
Extent 1 online resource.
Copyright date 2011
Publication date 2010, c2011; 2010
Issuance monographic
Language English

Creators/Contributors

Associated with Fatahalian, Kayvon
Associated with Stanford University, Computer Science Department
Primary advisor Hanrahan, P. M. (Patrick Matthew)
Thesis advisor Hanrahan, P. M. (Patrick Matthew)
Thesis advisor Akeley, Kurt
Thesis advisor Dally, William
Advisor Akeley, Kurt
Advisor Dally, William

Subjects

Genre Theses

Bibliographic information

Statement of responsibility Kayvon Fatahalian.
Note Submitted to the Department of Computer Science.
Thesis Thesis (Ph.D.)--Stanford University, 2011.
Location electronic resource

Access conditions

Copyright
© 2011 by Kayvon Fatahalian
License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC).

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