Fixed-ratio DXT format Frame Buffer Compressor for mobile graphics systems

摘要

Most of Frame Buffer Compression (FBC) methods are based on variable-length compression algorithm. The proposed fixed-ratio frame buffer compressor, which is based on S3 texture compression (S3TC) algorithm, compresses the recently rendered image into DXT format so that it can be employed as input compressed texture. We have optimized the frame buffer compressor to achieve real time performance and FPGA implementation, which occupies 406 slice registers and 1133 slice LUT in Xilinx Spartan6 FPGA. The compressor consumes 10% additional silicon space, but it reduces the bandwidth consumption to 16.8%–45.8% compared to that of 50–90% by the variable-length compression methods.