Academic Journal
Omega-Test: A Predictive Early-Z Culling to Improve the Graphics Pipeline Energy-Efficiency
| Τίτλος: | Omega-Test: A Predictive Early-Z Culling to Improve the Graphics Pipeline Energy-Efficiency |
|---|---|
| Συγγραφείς: | David Corbalan-Navarro, Juan L. Aragon, Marti Anglada, Enrique de Lucas, Joan-Manuel Parcerisa, Antonio Gonzalez |
| Συνεισφορές: | Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya. Departament d'Arquitectura de Computadors, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya. ARCO - Microarquitectura i Compiladors |
| Πηγή: | UPCommons. Portal del coneixement obert de la UPC Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC) IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics |
| Στοιχεία εκδότη: | Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), 2022. |
| Έτος έκδοσης: | 2022 |
| Θεματικοί όροι: | Hidden line/surface removal, Portable devices, 02 engineering and technology, Mobile processors, 01 natural sciences, 7. Clean energy, Processor architecture, Unitats de processament gràfic, Visibility determination, Àrees temàtiques de la UPC::Informàtica::Arquitectura de computadors, Energy-aware systems, Hardware architecture, 0103 physical sciences, Graphics processors, 0202 electrical engineering, electronic engineering, information engineering, Rendering (Computer graphics), Informàtica::Arquitectura de computadors [Àrees temàtiques de la UPC], Graphics processing units, Low-power design |
| Περιγραφή: | The most common task of GPUs is to render images in real time. When rendering a 3D scene, a key step is to determine which parts of every object are visible in the final image. There are different approaches to solve the visibility problem, the Z-Test being the most common. A main factor that significantly penalizes the energy efficiency of a GPU, especially in the mobile arena, is the so-called overdraw, which happens when a portion of an object is shaded and rendered but finally occluded by another object. This useless work results in a waste of energy; however, a conventional Z-Test only avoids a fraction of it. In this article we present a novel microarchitectural technique, the Omega-Test, to drastically reduce the overdraw on a Tile-Based Rendering (TBR) architecture. Graphics applications have a great degree of inter-frame coherence, which makes the output of a frame very similar to the previous one. The proposed approach leverages the frame-to-frame coherence by using the resulting information of the Z-Test for a tile (a buffer containing all the calculated pixel depths for a tile), which is discarded by nowadays GPUs, to predict the visibility of the same tile in the next frame. As a result, the Omega-Test early identifies occluded parts of the scene and avoids the rendering of non-visible surfaces eliminating costly computations and off-chip memory accesses. Our experimental evaluation shows average EDP savings in the overall GPU/Memory system of 26.4 percent and an average speedup of 16.3 percent for the evaluated benchmarks. |
| Τύπος εγγράφου: | Article |
| Περιγραφή αρχείου: | application/pdf |
| ISSN: | 2160-9306 1077-2626 |
| DOI: | 10.1109/tvcg.2021.3087863 |
| DOI: | 10.13039/100010661 |
| Σύνδεσμος πρόσβασης: | https://upcommons.upc.edu/bitstream/2117/357639/1/Omega_Test__TVCG_journal____R3___FINAL_version.pdf https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34106856 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34106856 https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34106856/ https://europepmc.org/article/MED/34106856 https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9449973 https://hdl.handle.net/2117/357639 https://doi.org/10.1109/tvcg.2021.3087863 |
| Rights: | IEEE Copyright |
| Αριθμός Καταχώρησης: | edsair.doi.dedup.....e44a108bdb5453e8cc9087080d01980b |
| Βάση Δεδομένων: | OpenAIRE |
| ISSN: | 21609306 10772626 |
|---|---|
| DOI: | 10.1109/tvcg.2021.3087863 |