Real time performance for texture mapping using the Pim Map technique in hardware

Abstract

Texture mapping is one of the effective methods for realistic picture generation. For the real time performance, some part of the algorithm must be implemented in hardware. Texture mapping introduces two major problems; texture filtering and texture coordinate calculation. The latter is not addressed in this paper. Filtering in hardware is the only way of performing the operation in real time. However, only the mip map and the Pim Map can effectively be implemented in hardware. We have investigated the feasibility of hardware implementation and have presented a hardware architecture for the fast texture mapping process. The Pim Map technique allows the pre-calculated texture tables to be partitioned into several memory banks and therefore, concurrent run time operations to be achieved with a considerable reduction in computational time. Apart from the texture memories several Look-Up tables have been used to calculate necessary parameters such as address offsets, reciprocals of division operations.