System and methods for providing histogram computation in a high precision rasterization data pipeline
US7010458B2 · kind B2 · utility
Assignee
Inventor
Key dates
| Filing date | Feb 9, 2005 |
| Grant date | Mar 7, 2006 |
| Priority date | — |
| Expiry date | Jun 18, 2025 |
Classification
- Technology area (CPC G)Physics
- CPC primaryG06T15/00
- WIPO fieldComputer technology
- WIPO sectorElectrical engineering
Abstract
A system and methods for implementing histogram computation, for example, into the rasterization pipeline of a 3-D graphics system, are provided. With the histogram computation mechanism, statistical histogram data may be generated for input data of any kind or retrieved from any source that may be specified in a 2-D array or specified in an immediate fashion to specialized data processing hardware. Depending on the nature of the input data, the data may be filtered before passing the data to data processing hardware for further processing. The data processing hardware may then apply an additional function to the input data set before calculation of the histogram data. Then, at some point, the data processing hardware may apply a function to the data to map the derived data to a real-valued function that can then be quantized to a histogram element in the range specified from zero to the number of histogram elements minus one. The corresponding element in this histogram is then incremented according to the data received as it passes through the graphics processor. Advantageously, relatively expensive host computing resources are conserved, and developers are insulated from the tedi…
Source: USPTO / EPO open patent data. Objective bibliographic and citation counts.