Reducing Shading on GPUs using Quad-Fragment Merging
Kayvon Fatahalian, Solomon Boulos, James Hegarty, Kurt Akeley, William R. Mark, Henry Moreton, Pat Hanrahan
In ACM Transactions on Graphics, 29(4), July 2010.
Abstract: Current GPUs perform a significant amount of redundant shading when surfaces are tessellated into small triangles. We address this inefficiency by augmenting the GPU pipeline to gather and merge rasterized fragments from adjacent triangles in a mesh. This approach has minimal impact on output image quality, is amenable to implementation in fixed-function hardware, and, when rendering pixel-sized triangles, requires only a small amount of buffering to reduce overall pipeline shading work by a factor of eight. We find that a fragment-shading pipeline with this optimization is competitive with the REYES pipeline approach of shading at micropolygon vertices and, in cases of complex occlusion, can perform up to two times less shading work.
Keyword(s): GPU architecture, micropolygons, real-time rendering
Article URL: http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1778765.1778804
BibTeX format:
@article{Fatahalian:2010:RSO,
  author = {Kayvon Fatahalian and Solomon Boulos and James Hegarty and Kurt Akeley and William R. Mark and Henry Moreton and Pat Hanrahan},
  title = {Reducing Shading on GPUs using Quad-Fragment Merging},
  journal = {ACM Transactions on Graphics},
  volume = {29},
  number = {4},
  pages = {67:1--67:8},
  month = jul,
  year = {2010},
}
Search for more articles by Kayvon Fatahalian.
Search for more articles by Solomon Boulos.
Search for more articles by James Hegarty.
Search for more articles by Kurt Akeley.
Search for more articles by William R. Mark.
Search for more articles by Henry Moreton.
Search for more articles by Pat Hanrahan.

Return to the search page.


graphbib: Powered by "bibsql" and "SQLite3."