A superscalar 3D graphics engine

Abstract

3D graphics performance is increasing faster than any other computing application. Almost all PC systems now include 3D graphics accelerators for games, CAD, or visualization applications. Many of the microarchitectural techniques that have been used to enhance the performance of microprocessors can be applied to graphics systems as well. We present an architecture for an out-of-order, superscalar rasterizer for 3D graphics. This allows the concurrent execution of multiple graphics primitives while maintaining exact sequential semantics. Experimental results show 1.5-3.6X speedups on real applications using a simple model, similar to the results from many integer benchmarks on superscalar processors. Enhanced techniques specific to 3D graphics for decomposing large triangles and breaking false dependence chains increase performance to more than 10x a sequential system.