AMFS: Adaptive Multi-Frequency Shading for Future Graphics Processors

摘要

We propose a powerful hardware architecture for pixel shading,rnwhich enables flexible control of shading rates and automatic shadingrnreuse between triangles in tessellated primitives. The main goalrnis efficient pixel shading for moderately to finely tessellated geometry,rnwhich is not handled well by current GPUs. Our methodrneffectively decouples the cost of pixel shading from the geometricrncomplexity. It thereby enables a wider use of tessellation and finerngeometry, even at very limited power budgets. The core idea is tornshade over small local grids in parametric patch space, and reusernshading for nearby samples. We also support the decompositionrnof shaders into multiple parts, which are shaded at different frequencies.rnShading rates can be locally and adaptively controlled, inrnorder to direct the computations to visually important areas and tornprovide performance scaling with a graceful degradation of quality.rnAnother important benefit of shading in patch space is that it allowsrnefficient rendering of distribution effects, which further closes therngap between real-time and offline rendering.