Compression techniques for dynamically-generated graphics resources

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-9524536-B2
Application number	US-201414341467-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Jul 25, 2014
Priority date	Jul 25, 2014
Publication date	Dec 20, 2016
Grant date	Dec 20, 2016

Abstract

Compression techniques for dynamically-generated graphics resources are described. In one embodiment, for example, an apparatus may comprise logic, at least a portion of which is in hardware, the logic to determine one or more usage characteristics of a dynamically-generated graphics resource, determine whether to compress the dynamically-generated graphics resource based on the one or more usage characteristics, and in response to a determination to compress the dynamically-generated graphics resource, select a compression procedure based on a graphics quality threshold for the dynamically-generated graphics resource. Other embodiments are described and claimed.

First claim

What is claimed is:

1. An apparatus, comprising:
logic, at least a portion of which is in hardware, the logic to
determine, during a pass of a generation process for a graphics frame, one or more usage characteristics that indicate how frequently a dynamically-generated graphics resource will traverse a memory bus during a remainder of the generation process for the graphics frame,
determine whether to compress the dynamically-generated graphics resource based on the one or more usage characteristics, and
in response to a determination to compress the dynamically-generated graphics resource:
select a compression procedure based on a graphics quality threshold for the dynamically-generated graphics resource;
compress the dynamically-generated graphics resource according to the selected compression procedure; and
store the compressed dynamically-generated graphics resource in a memory unit.

2. The apparatus of claim 1 , the logic to determine a memory bandwidth consumption metric based on the one or more usage characteristics and determine whether to compress the dynamically-generated graphics resource based on the memory bandwidth consumption metric.

3. The apparatus of claim 1 , the graphics quality threshold indicating an acceptable degree of quality reduction for the dynamically-generated graphics resource.

4. The apparatus of claim 1 , the logic to select the compression procedure from among a plurality of lossy compression procedures.

5. The apparatus of claim 4 , the logic to select, from among the plurality of lossy compression procedures, a most compressive lossy compression procedure for which a corresponding graphics quality metric is not less than the graphics quality threshold.

6. The apparatus of claim 1 , the logic to retrieve the compressed dynamically-generated graphics resource from the memory unit, decompress the compressed dynamically-generated graphics resource, and generate the graphics frame based on the decompressed dynamically-generated graphics resource.

7. The apparatus of claim 1 , the logic to determine whether to compress the dynamically-generated graphics resource based on the one or more usage characteristics and the graphics quality threshold for the dynamically-generated graphics resource.

8. The apparatus of claim 1 , comprising:
a display;
a radio frequency (RF) transceiver; and
one or more RF antennas.

9. At least one non-transitory computer-readable storage medium comprising a set of instructions that, in response to being executed on a computing device, cause the computing device to:
determine, during a pass of a generation process for a graphics frame, one or more usage characteristics that indicate how frequently a dynamically-generated graphics resource will traverse a memory bus during a remainder of the generation process for the graphics frame;
determine whether to compress the dynamically-generated graphics resource based on the one or more usage characteristics; and
in response to a determination to compress the dynamically-generated graphics resource:
select a compression procedure based on a graphics quality threshold for the dynamically-generated graphics resource;
compress the dynamically-generated graphics resource according to the selected compression procedure; and
store the compressed dynamically-generated graphics resource in a memory unit.

10. The at least one non-transitory computer-readable storage medium of claim 9 , comprising instructions that, in response to being executed on the computing device, cause the computing device to:
determine a memory bandwidth consumption metric based on the one or more usage characteristics; and
determine whether to compress the dynamically-generated graphics resource based on the memory bandwidth consumption metric.

11. The at least one non-transitory computer-readable storage medium of claim 9 , the graphics quality threshold indicating an acceptable degree of quality reduction for the dynamically-generated graphics resource.

12. The at least one non-transitory computer-readable storage medium of claim 9 , comprising instructions that, in response to being executed on the computing device, cause the computing device to select the compression procedure from among a plurality of lossy compression procedures.

13. The at least one non-transitory computer-readable storage medium of claim 12 , comprising instructions that, in response to being executed on the computing device, cause the computing device to select, from among the plurality of lossy compression procedures, a most compressive lossy compression procedure for which a corresponding graphics quality metric is not less than the graphics quality threshold.

14. The at least one non-transitory computer-readable storage medium of claim 9 , comprising instructions that, in response to being executed on the computing device, cause the computing device to:
retrieve the compressed dynamically-generated graphics resource from the memory unit;
decompress the compressed dynamically-generated graphics resource; and
generate the graphics frame based on the decompressed dynamically-generated graphics resource.

15. The at least one non-transitory computer-readable storage medium of claim 9 , comprising instructions that, in response to being executed on the computing device, cause the computing device to determine whether to compress the dynamically-generated graphics resource based on the one or more usage characteristics and the graphics quality threshold for the dynamically-generated graphics resource.

16. A method, comprising:
determining, during a pass of a generation process for a graphics frame, one or more usage characteristics that indicate how frequently a dynamically-generated graphics resource will traverse a memory bus during a remainder of the generation process for the graphics frame;
determining, by a processor circuit, whether to compress the dynamically-generated graphics resource based on the one or more usage characteristics; and
in response to a determination to compress the dynamically-generated graphics resource:
selecting a compression procedure based on a graphics quality threshold for the dynamically-generated graphics resource;
compressing the dynamically-generated graphics resource according to the selected compression procedure; and
storing the compressed dynamically-generated graphics resource in a memory unit.

17. The method of claim 16 , comprising:
determining a memory bandwidth consumption metric based on the one or more usage characteristics; and
determining whether to compress the dynamically-generated graphics resource based on the memory bandwidth consumption metric.

18. The method of claim 16 , the graphics quality threshold indicating an acceptable degree of quality reduction for the dynamically-generated graphics resource.

19. The method of claim 16 , comprising selecting the compression procedure from among a plurality of lossy compression procedures.

20. The method of claim 19 , comprising selecting, from among the plurality of lossy compression procedures, a most compressive lossy compression procedure for which a corresponding graphics quality metric is not less than the graphics quality threshold.

21. The method of claim 16 , comprising:
retrieving the compressed dynamically-generated graphics resource from the memory unit;
decompressing the compressed dynamically-generated graphics resource; and
generating the graphics frame based on the decompressed dynamically-generated grap

Assignees

• Intel Corp

Inventors

• Taylor Robert B
• Schluessler Travis T

Classifications

• G06F3/14

  Digital output to display device {; Cooperation and interconnection of the display device with other functional units} · CPC title

• G09G5/393

  Arrangements for updating the contents of the bit-mapped memory · CPC title

• G06T1/60 Primary

  Memory management · CPC title

• G09G2340/02

  Handling of images in compressed format, e.g. JPEG, MPEG · CPC title

• G09G2370/16

  Use of wireless transmission of display information · CPC title