EP0314335A2
Expired / Lapsed
EP
⏱️ 0.0 years remaining
A parallel surface processing system for graphics display
Assignee: International Business Machines Corp
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Filing: 1988-10-10
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Granted: —
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Expires: 2008-10-10
Abstract
Abstract A Pipeline and Parallel Processing system for generating Surface Patches for both Wireframe and Solid/Shaded Models in a Raster Graphics Display. The inputs to a Transformation Processor are the parameters for the Rational Bezier Surfaces: a 2-dimensional array of control points, and weights. The outputs are the coordinates of the corner points and the normals (to the surface) of the patches, which make up the surface. The system consists of three Pipeline stages: 1. A front-end processor fetches the data from memory and feeds the Transformation Processor; 2. four Floating Point Processors in Parallel for tessellating the surfaces into small patches; and 3. one Floating Point Processor for generating normals at the vertices of the small patches. The output is sent to the rest of the Graphics System for clipping, mapping, and shading.
Inventors
- 👤 Bob Chao-Chu Liang
Bibliographic Details
Application Number
—
Jurisdiction
EP
Data Source
google_patents
Last Synchronized
2026-10-30 05:52
CPC Classifications
G; G06; G06T; G06T17/00; G06T17/20
Claims Analysis
Total Claims: 12
Claim 1
Independent Claim
74 words
Apparatus for generating surface information for a graphics display system, comprising: a first processor for controlling data flow from a data storage to a transformation processor; a transformation processor which further comprises a plurality of floating point processors connected in parallel for tesselating a surface to be processed into a plurality of patches; and a floating point processor connected to outputs of said parallel processors for generating normals at the vertices of said patches.
Claim 2
Dependent Claim
74 words
Apparatus for generating surface information for a graphics display system, comprising: a first processor for controlling data flow from a data storage to a transformation processor; a transformation processor which further comprises a plurality of floating point processors connected in parallel for tesselating a surface to be processed into a plurality of patches; and a floating point processor connected to outputs of said parallel processors for generating normals at the vertices of said patches.
Claim 3
Independent Claim
88 words
A method for generating surface information for a graphics display system, comprising the steps of: providing from storage data that represents a surface to be processed to a transformation processor that further comprises a plurality of floating point processors connected in parallel; processing in parallel, in said transformation processor, said data so as to tesselate said surface into a plurality of patches and generate further data representing said patches; and providing said further data to a floating point processor for generating normals at the vertices of said patches.
Claim 4
Independent Claim
88 words
A method for generating surface information for a graphics display system, comprising the steps of: providing from storage data that represents a surface to be processed to a transformation processor that further comprises a plurality of floating point processors connected in parallel; processing in parallel, in said transformation processor, said data so as to tesselate said surface into a plurality of patches and generate further data representing said patches; and providing said further data to a floating point processor for generating normals at the vertices of said patches.
Claim 5
Dependent Claim
81 words
A method according to Claim 2, wherein said step of providing from storage further comprises the steps of: providing said data as input control points in the form of coordinates and weights, processable according to the Rational B-Spline computation; and wherein said step of processing in parallel further comprises the steps of: performing geometric transform computations, in parallel, on said input control points to derive tranformed coordinate; and generating the x, y and z coordinates for the corners of each patch.
Claim 6
Dependent Claim
78 words
A method according to Claim 3, wherein said step of generating the x, y, and z coordinates curther comprises the steps of: multiplying the transformed coordinates by their associated weight values to generate intermediate data representing said product; providing data representing two size variables; generating from said intermediate data the coefficients of the coordinate components of a spline polynomial of said two size variables; and dividing said coefficients by their associated weight values to compute the coordinate values.
Claim 7
Independent Claim
64 words
A method for generating surface information for a graphics display system, comprising the steps of: storing spline surface control point data from said host computer storage; transferring selected control point data from said host computer sotrage to a graphics display workstation having a prallel processor system; and generating in said graphics display workstation, using said parallel processor system, polygon data corresponding to said surface.
Claim 8
Independent Claim
64 words
A method for generating surface information for a graphics display system, comprising the steps of: storing spline surface control point data from said host computer storage; transferring selected control point data from said host computer sotrage to a graphics display workstation having a prallel processor system; and generating in said graphics display workstation, using said parallel processor system, polygon data corresponding to said surface.
Claim 9
Independent Claim
92 words
A method for generating surface information for a graphics display system, comprising the steps of: providing from stoage spline surface control point data that represents a surface to be processed to a transformation processor that further comprises a plurality of floating point processors connected in parallel; processing in parallel, in said transformation processor, said data so as to tesselate said surface into a plurality of patches and generate further data representing said patches; and providing said further data to a floating point processor for generating normals at the vertices of said patches.
Claim 10
Independent Claim
92 words
A method for generating surface information for a graphics display system, comprising the steps of: providing from stoage spline surface control point data that represents a surface to be processed to a transformation processor that further comprises a plurality of floating point processors connected in parallel; processing in parallel, in said transformation processor, said data so as to tesselate said surface into a plurality of patches and generate further data representing said patches; and providing said further data to a floating point processor for generating normals at the vertices of said patches.
Claim 11
Dependent Claim
56 words
A method for generating surface information for a graphics display system according to Claim 6 where said step of processing in parallel further comprises the steps of: performing geometric transform computations, in parallel, on said input control points to derive transformed coordinates; and generating the x, y and z coordinates for the corners of each patch.
Claim 12
Dependent Claim
87 words
A method for generating surface information for a graphics display system according to Claim 7 wherein said step of generating the x, y, and z coordinates further comprises the steps of: multiplying the transformed coordinates by their associated weight values to generate intermediate data representing said product; providing data representing two size variables; generating from said intermediate data the coefficients of the coordinate components of a spline polynomial of said two size variables; and dividing said coefficients by their associated weight values to compute the coordinate values.
References Cited (Backward Citations)
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