Graphic system comprising a pipelined graphic engine, pipelining method and computer program product

Abstract

A graphic system includes a pipelined graphic engine for generating image frames for display. The pipelined graphic engine includes a geometric processing stage for performing motion extraction, and a rendering stage for generating full image frames at a first frame rate for display at a second frame rate. The second frame rate is higher than the first frame rate. A motion encoder stage receives motion information from the geometric processing stage, and produces an interpolated frame signal representative of interpolated frames. A motion compensation stage receives the interpolated frame signal from the motion encoder stage, and the full image frames from the rendering stage for generating the interpolated frames. A preferred application is in graphic systems that operate in association with smart displays through a wireless connection, such as in mobile phones.

Description

FIELD OF THE INVENTION The present invention relates to techniques for pipelining 3D graphics in a graphic engine for rendering some frames and for extracting motion information and applying them to interpolate new frames. In particular, the present invention is applicable to graphic engines that operate in association with smart displays through a wireless or wired connection. Exemplary of such an application is the graphic engine in a mobile phone equipped with a wireless (i.e., Bluetooth) or wired connection to a remote display, or within the graphic engine in a mobile phone having an embedded display. However, reference to these preferred applications are in no way to be construed as limiting the scope of the invention. BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION Modern 3D graphic pipelines for graphic engines in graphic cards, like OpenGL and Direct3D pipelines, include a rich set of features for synthesizing interactive tridimensional scenes with a high and realistic quality. To output fr...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

The present invention provides a graphic engine that can transmit frames to a display unit at a reduced rate, using simpler circuits and at a lower cost. The engine uses a pipelined tridimensional engine that generates fully rendered frames and additional motion vector information, which is used to generate interpolated frames based upon motion compensation. This results in a significant reduction in complexity and the need for motion estimation on the engine side. The system architecture proposes a separation of the engine and display, with the display unit being associated with the system for displaying the image frames at the reduced frame rate. The graphic system may be integrated as a self-contained device with the display unit.

Problems solved by technology

To output frame-rates ranging from 20 / 30 to 40 / 100 frames per second, powerful dedicated graphic cards are required having correspondingly high costs.

Typically, stages that process and affect pixels (at the end of the pipeline) have a higher complexity than those stages that process the 3D scene details.

These operations are the most demanding in terms of computational power.

This is the main reason why highly complex operations reside at this stage.

These methods span from low (flat) to high (phong) complexity and in the realism achieved.

However, this will decrease the level of quality obtained.

It is a very simple method, but the resulting quality is very poor.

A major limit of temporal frame averaging lies in that no correction in the motion direction is available, even if possibly needed.

This however requires more computational power and memory.

Such a bitrate is too high to be transmitted by resorting to current wireless or wired transmission standards that use transmission rates from hundreds of kbit / s to Mbit / s.

These approaches are penalized by their complexity related to the architecture of JPEG / MPEG encoders and decoders.

Furthermore, all these blocks process frames at full frame rate, and also introduce a very high latency thus making it difficult to play latency-sensitive application like games.

While a video encoder can be simpler than an MPEGF2 / 4 or JPEG encoder, the motion estimator makes the system very expensive in view of the complexity of the functions it performs, the need for a frame buffer, and the need of processing process frames at the full rate output by the 3D engine.

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