Tile-Based Rendering Using Hilbert Curve Locality
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Solution Overview
Problem
Tile-based rendering methods face inefficiencies in power consumption and memory usage compared to object-based rendering, particularly due to suboptimal handling of tile locality and cache utilization, leading to performance degradation.
Innovation Solution
A GPU-based image processing method that determines a sequence of tiles using a space filling curve or Hilbert curve for efficient allocation to idle fragment processors, enabling parallel rendering and shared cache access to optimize tile processing and reduce idle time.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Quantity of substance
If tiles are rendered using traditional tile-based rendering scheme, then memory consumption is reduced, but power consumption increases and rendering efficiency decreases due to suboptimal cache utilization and tile locality handling
Solution Approach 1:
The screen is divided into multiple tiles, and each tile is further divided into sub-tiles for independent processing by different fragment processors. This segmentation enables parallel rendering while maintaining cache efficiency by limiting the data access scope to smaller sub-tile regions.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent implements dynamic tile dispatching where the tile dispatching unit dynamically assigns tiles to idle fragment processors based on their availability status. This dynamic allocation optimizes processor utilization and maintains high rendering efficiency while reducing memory consumption through efficient cache usage.
2Ease of operation
If object-based rendering is used, then processing is more intuitive and hardware design is easier, but power consumption and memory consumption increase due to random memory access for each pixel
Solution Approach 1:
The rendering process is segmented into tile-based units with systematic processing order determined by space-filling curves, replacing the random pixel-by-pixel processing of object-based rendering. This segmentation maintains processing intuitiveness while enabling sequential memory access patterns that reduce power consumption.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent introduces a tile dispatching unit as an intermediary between the rendering pipeline and fragment processors. This intermediary manages the systematic tile allocation and ensures efficient cache utilization, bridging the gap between intuitive processing requirements and low-power memory access patterns.
3Productivity
If more fragment processors are allocated to handle more tiles, then rendering parallelism increases, but load balancing becomes difficult and idle processor time increases due to poor tile locality
Solution Approach 1:
The system dynamically monitors fragment processor idle status and adjusts tile allocation in real-time. The tile dispatching unit continuously assigns new tiles to processors that become idle, ensuring balanced workload distribution and minimizing idle time across all processors while maintaining high parallelism.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent implements a feedback mechanism where the tile dispatching unit monitors the idle status of fragment processors and uses this information to make informed allocation decisions. This feedback loop ensures that tiles are always assigned to available processors, optimizing parallelism while eliminating idle time through adaptive resource management.
Data Source
AI summary
Disclosed is a method and apparatus for performing tile-based rendering. A sequence of tiles to be processed may be determined based on a locality among the tiles. A tile dispatch unit selects a subsequent tile to be dispatched, based on the determined sequence. The tile dispatch unit may check whether an idle fragment processor exists among the plurality of fragment processors, and may dynamically dispatch the selected tile to an idle fragment processor