Starry, starry night, paint your palette blue and gray
Don McLean on Vincent Van Gogh
Demand for graphics and gaming applications has always outpaced the growth of processor capability. Graphics applications are becoming one of the "killer apps" for mobile and handheld devices. Enhanced graphics capability offers better user experience through an attractive user interface and an enjoyable gaming experience. Interactive games and graphics applications challenge the computational capabilities of the processor and memory subsystem. Optimizing for these applications requires an intimate understanding of the applications and the capabilities of the processing engine. This chapter, a brief overview of the graphics processing chain, demonstrates how Intel Wireless MMX technology can be used to accelerate the different components of the processing chain.
Graphics pipeline is a common term used to describe the graphics processing chain, which consists of the series of algorithmic stages that must be performed to create an image on the screen. The processing sequence is generally consistent across all implementations; however, it can be modified and optimized based on the content of the scene and hardware capabilities.
The graphics pipeline operates on a set of input data referred to as primitives. The primitives can be in the form of a triangle, strips of triangles, points, and lines. Primitives represented as vertices go in at one end of the graphics pipe and come out the other end as a set of pixels in the frame buffer. A display controller displays these pixels onto...
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