Tile Change List Buffer for Frame Buffer Management
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Solution Overview
Problem
In remote computing systems, decoding and rendering image data requires significant resources, leading to inefficiencies such as image tearing and slowed rendering processes due to the need to transfer unchanged tiles, which can be avoided by tracking and managing changed tiles effectively.
Innovation Solution
Implementing a system that uses a tile change list buffer to track changed tiles and their locations, allowing for efficient retrieval and updating of frame buffers, reducing memory traffic by avoiding the copying of unchanged tile data and utilizing virtual buffer management to drive display controllers.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Loss of energy
If only changed tiles are stored in the buffer, then memory traffic is reduced, but unchanged tiles contain stale data causing image tearing
Solution Approach 1:
The image buffer is divided into multiple tile buffers, each storing data for a specific tile region. This segmentation allows the system to track which tiles have changed and transfer only those tiles between buffers, rather than copying the entire frame. The tile change list buffer further segments the tracking mechanism by maintaining individual change records for each tile, enabling precise identification of only the modified regions that need transfer.
2Reliability
If unchanged tiles are transferred from one buffer to the other, then image quality is maintained, but rendering speed is reduced
Solution Approach 1:
The system extracts only the changed tiles from the full frame data and transfers them to the next buffer, rather than copying the entire frame. The tile change list buffer identifies which tiles have changed, and only those specific tiles are copied between buffers. This extraction of only necessary data maintains image quality while significantly reducing the data transfer volume and improving rendering speed.
3Loss of energy
If a tile change list buffer is used to track changed tiles, then memory traffic is reduced, but device complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The tile change list buffer serves multiple functions: it tracks which tiles have changed, stores frame number information for synchronization, and provides indexing data for efficient tile retrieval. By consolidating these multiple functions into a single data structure, the system reduces overall complexity compared to having separate mechanisms for each function, while still achieving efficient memory traffic reduction.
Data Source
AI summary
Disclosed are methods and systems for tracking which data tiles have changed within an image frame. In an embodiment, each cell of a tile change list buffer may contain a frame number and updated when a tile is received from encoder. The frame number may be used as a base pointer for a particular frame buffer. When a frame is decoded, the contents of the tile change list buffer may be copied from the current tile change list buffer to the next buffer. This process may reduce memory traffic because the unchanged tile data does not have to be copied from frame to frame.