US 12,236,529 B2
Graphics discard engine
Christopher J. Brennan, Boxborough, MA (US); Randy Wayne Ramsey, Orlando, FL (US); Nishank Pathak, Orlando, FL (US); Ricky Wai Yeung Iu, Markham (CA); Jimshed Mirza, Markham (CA); and Anthony Chan, Markham (CA)
Assigned to Advanced Micro Devices, Inc., Santa Clara, CA (US); and ATI Technologies ULC, Markham (CA)
Filed by Advanced Micro Devices, Inc., Santa Clara, CA (US); and ATI Technologies ULC, Markham (CA)
Filed on Dec. 27, 2021, as Appl. No. 17/562,653.
Prior Publication US 2023/0206559 A1, Jun. 29, 2023
Int. Cl. G06T 17/20 (2006.01); G06T 1/60 (2006.01); G06T 15/00 (2011.01); G06T 17/10 (2006.01)
CPC G06T 17/20 (2013.01) [G06T 1/60 (2013.01); G06T 15/005 (2013.01); G06T 17/10 (2013.01)] 20 Claims
OG exemplary drawing
 
1. An apparatus comprising:
a cache comprising circuitry configured to store attribute data of vertices of each primitive of a set of primitives;
a plurality of compute units comprising circuitry configured to execute pixel shaders to consume the attribute data; and
a discard engine comprising circuitry configured to:
receive a bin completion signal indicating a bin of primitives has been processed by the pixel shaders of the plurality of compute units;
retrieve, from the bin completion signal, a bin identifier (ID) specifying the bin that has been processed; and
responsive to a search of a discard table with entries for different ranges of attribute data, generate and convey discard commands for ranges of attribute data having a same bin ID as the bin ID retrieved from the bin completion signal.