Data processing systems

• Main Authors: Østby, Kenneth Edvard, Bermingham, David James, Engh-Halstvedt, Andreas Due, Nystad, Jørn, Kleen, Amir
• Format: Patent
• Language: English
• Published: 02.10.2018
• Subjects: CALCULATING; COMPUTING; COUNTING; IMAGE DATA PROCESSING OR GENERATION, IN GENERAL; PHYSICS

A graphics processing unit 3 includes a rasterizer 25, a thread spawner 40, a programmable execution unit 41, a varying interpolator 42, a texture mapper 43, and a blender 29. The programmable execution unit 41 is able to communicate with the varying interpolator 42, the texture mapper 43 and the blender 29 to request processing operations by those graphic specific accelerators. In addition to this, these graphics-specific accelerators are also able to communicate directly with each other and with the thread spawner 40, independently of the programmable execution unit 41. This allows for certain graphics processing operations to be performed using direct communication between the graphics-specific accelerators of the graphics processing unit, instead of executing instructions in the programmable execution unit to trigger the performance of those operations by the graphics-specific accelerators.