Farhad Living Fouladi

6867781, Mar 15, 2005

Nov 28, 2000

09/722419

Timothy J. Van Hook - Atherton CA, US
Farhad Fouladi - Los Altos Hills CA, US
Robert Moore - Heathrow FL, US
Howard H. Cheng - Sammamish WA, US

Nintendo Co., Ltd. - Kyoto

G06T001/20

345506, 345522, 345501, 345502

A graphics system including a custom graphics and audio processor produces exciting 2D and 3D graphics and surround sound. The system includes a graphics and audio processor including a 3D graphics pipeline and an audio digital signal processor. The graphics pipeline processes graphics commands at different rates depending upon the type of operation being performed. This makes it difficult to synchronize pipeline operations with external operations (e. g. , a graphics processor with a main processor). To solve this problem, a synchronization token including a programmable data message is inserted into a graphics command stream sent to a graphics pipeline. At a predetermined point near the bottom of the pipeline, the token is captured and a signal is generated indicated the token has arrived. The graphics command producer can look at the captured token to determine which of multiple possible tokens has been captured, and can use the information to synchronize a task with the graphics pipeline. Applications include maintaining memory coherence in memory shared between the 3D graphics pipeline and a graphics command producer.

6937245, Aug 30, 2005

Nov 28, 2000

09/722380

Timothy J. Van Hook - Atherton CA, US
Farhad Fouladi - Los Altos Hills CA, US

Nintendo Co., Ltd. - Kyoto

G09K005/397

345546, 345545, 345547, 345604, 345605, 345422

A graphics system including a custom graphics and audio processor produces exciting 2D and 3D graphics and surround sound. The system includes a graphics and audio processor including a 3D graphics pipeline and an audio digital signal processor. The graphics system has a graphics processor includes an embedded frame buffer for storing frame data prior to sending the frame data to an external location, such as main memory. The embedded frame buffer is selectively configurable to store the following pixel formats: point sampled RGB color and depth, super-sampled RGB color and depth, and YUV (luma/chroma). Graphics commands are provided which enable the programmer to configure the embedded frame buffer for any of the pixel formats on a frame-by-frame basis.

6999100, Feb 14, 2006

Nov 28, 2000

09/726226

Mark M. Leather - Saratoga CA, US
Farhad Fouladi - Los Altos Hills CA, US

Nintendo Co., Ltd. - Kyoto

G09G 5/00

345611, 345613

A graphics system including a custom graphics and audio processor produces exciting 2D and 3D graphics and surround sound. The system includes a graphics and audio processor including a 3D graphics pipeline and an audio digital signal processor. The system achieves highly efficient full-scene anti-aliasing by implementing a programmable-location super-sampling arrangement and using a selectable-weight vertical-pixel support area blending filter. For a 2×2 pixel group (quad), the locations of three samples within each super-sampled pixel are individually selectable. A twelve-bit multi-sample coverage mask is used to determine which of twelve samples within a pixel quad are enabled based on the portions of each pixel occupied by a primitive fragment and any pre-computed z-buffering. Each super-sampled pixel is filtered during a copy-out operation from a local memory to an external frame buffer using a pixel blending filter arrangement that combines seven samples from three vertically arranged pixels. Three samples are taken from the current pixel, two samples are taken from a pixel immediately above the current pixel and two samples are taken from a pixel immediately below the current pixel.

7075545, Jul 11, 2006

Mar 18, 2005

11/082854

Timothy J. Van Hook - Atherton CA, US
Farhad Fouladi - Los Altos Hills CA, US

Nintendo Co., Ltd. - Kyoto

G09G 5/397
G09G 5/36
G09G 5/02

345546, 345545, 345547, 345604, 345605

A graphics system including a custom graphics and audio processor produces exciting 2D and 3D graphics and surround sound. The system includes a graphics and audio processor including a 3D graphics pipeline and an audio digital signal processor. The graphics system has a graphics processor includes an embedded frame buffer for storing frame data prior to sending the frame data to an external location, such as main memory. The embedded frame buffer is selectively configurable to store the following pixel formats: point sampled RGB color and depth, super-sampled RGB color and depth, and YUV (luma/chroma). Graphics commands are provided which enable the programmer to configure the embedded frame buffer for any of the pixel formats on a frame-by-frame basis.

7119813, Oct 10, 2006

Jun 2, 2000

09/585329

Martin Hollis - Cambridge, GB
Anthony P. DeLaurier - Sunnyvale CA, US
Farhad Fouladi - Los Altos Hills CA, US

Nintendo Co., Ltd. - Kyoto

G09G 5/00

345605, 345600

A compact image element encoding format selectively allocates a bit field within the format to alternately encode either multi-bit alpha resolution or increased color resolution. This encoding technique may be advantageously used to allocate encoding bits to model semi-transparency while using those same bits for other purposes (e. g. , higher color resolution) in instances where semi-transparency is not required (e. g. , for opaque image elements). In one advantageous embodiment, the same encoding format can provide either RGB5 or RGB4A3, on an image-element-by-image-element basis. Applications include but are not limited to texture mapping in a 3D computer graphics system such as a home video game system or a personal computer.

7129956, Oct 31, 2006

Mar 24, 2003

10/394222

Martin Hollis - Cambridge, GB
Anthony P. DeLaurier - Sunnyvale CA, US
Farhad Fouladi - Los Altos Hills CA, US

Nintendo Co., Ltd. - Kyoto

G09G 5/02
G09G 5/00

345592, 345582, 345605

A compact image element encoding format selectively allocates a bit field within the format to alternately encode either multi-bit alpha resolution or increased color resolution. This encoding technique may be advantageously used to allocate encoding bits to model semi-transparency while using those same bits for other purposes (e. g. , higher color resolution) in instances where semi-transparency is not required (e. g. , for opaque image elements). In one advantageous embodiment, the same encoding format can provide either RGB5 or RGB4A3, on an image-element-by-image-element basis. Applications include but are not limited to texture mapping in a 3D computer graphics system such as a home video game system or a personal computer.

7184059, Feb 27, 2007

Nov 28, 2000

09/722663

Farhad Fouladi - Los Altos Hills CA, US
Mark M. Leather - Saratoga CA, US
Robert Moore - Heathrow FL, US
Howard Cheng - Sammamish WA, US
Timothy J. Van Hook - Atherton CA, US

Nintendo Co., Ltd. - Kyoto

G09G 5/02
G09G 5/397
G06T 1/20

345604, 345546, 345506

A graphics system including a custom graphics and audio processor produces exciting 2D and 3D graphics and surround sound. The system includes a graphics and audio processor including a 3D graphics pipeline and an audio digital signal processor. The graphics processor includes an embedded frame buffer for storing frame data prior to sending the frame data to an external location, such as main memory. A copy pipeline is provided which converts the data from one format to another format prior to writing the data to the external location. The conversion may be from one RGB color format to another RGB color format, from one YUV format to another YUV format, from an RGB color format to a YUV color format, or from a YUV color format to an RGB color format. The formatted data is either transferred to a display buffer, for use by the video interface, or to a texture buffer, for use as a texture by the graphics pipeline in a subsequent rendering process.

7196710, Mar 27, 2007

Nov 28, 2000

09/726215

Farhad Fouladi - Los Altos Hills CA, US
Robert Moore - Heathrow FL, US

Nintendo Co., Ltd. - Kyoto

G09G 5/36
G06T 1/60
G06T 1/00

345553, 345530, 345501

A graphics system including a custom graphics and audio processor produces exciting 2D and 3D graphics and surround sound. The system includes a graphics and audio processor including a 3D graphics pipeline and an audio digital signal processor. Techniques for efficiently buffering graphics data between a producer and a consumer within a low-cost graphics systems such as a 3D home video game overcome the problem that a small-sized FIFO buffer in the graphics hardware may not adequately load balance a producer and consumer—causing the producer to stall when the consumer renders bit primitives. One aspect of the invention solves this invention by allocating part of main memory to provide a variable number of variable sized graphics commands buffers. Applications can specify the number of buffers and the size of each. All writes to the graphics FIFO can be routed a buffer in main memory.