A LOW-COST RASTER ENGINE FOR VIDEO GAME, MULTIMEDIA PC AND INTERACTIVE TV

Abstract

A low-cost Raster Engine (RE) is designed and implemented to improve the performance of 3D computer graphics and image composition application for video games, multimedia PCs and interactive TVs. Three operation modes: Gouraud and Phong shading algorithms, and image composition are incorporated in this chip. Modified digital differential analyzer (DDA), 2-level pipeline, and constant execution time for calculating cos(n) theta are proposed as the features of this design. The accelerator is implemented by 0.8 um SPDM CMOS VLSI technology and able to release more then 50% CPU loads.