Floating-point buffer compression in a unified codec architecture
Author
Editor
- David Luebke
- John D. Owens
Summary, in English
This paper presents what we believe are the first (public) algorithms for floating-point (fp) color and fp depth buffer compression. The depth codec is also available in an integer version. The codecs are harmonized, meaning that they share basic technology, making it easier to use the same hardware unit for both types of compression. We further suggest to use these codecs in a unified codec architecture, meaning that compression/decompression units previously only used for color- and depth buffer compression can be used also during texture accesses. Finally, we investigate the bandwidth implication of using this in a unified cache architecture. The proposed fp16 color buffer codec compresses data down to 40% of the original, and the fp16 depth codec allows compression down to 4.5 bpp, compared to 5.3 for the state-of-the-art int24 depth compression method. If used in a unified codec and cache architecture, bandwidth reductions of about 50% are possible, which is significant.
Department/s
Publishing year
2008
Language
English
Pages
75-84
Publication/Series
Graphics Hardware
Document type
Conference paper
Topic
- Computer Science
Keywords
- Buffer compression
- Data compaction
- Graphics hardware
- Graphics processors
Conference name
Graphics Hardware 2008
Conference date
2008-06-20
Status
Published
Research group
- Computer Graphics