UVA Graphics Paper Index

Small-Scale Reconfigurability for Improved Performance and Double Precision in Graphics Hardware

Kevin Dale
Jeremy Sheaffer
Vinu Vijay Kumar
David Luebke
Greg Humphreys
Kevin Skadron
International Journal of Electronics 94(5), 2007


Abstract

We explore the application of Small-Scale Reconfigurability (SSR) to graphics hardware. SSR is an architectural technique wherein functionality common to multiple subunits is reused rather than replicated, yielding high-performance reconfigurable hardware with reduced area requirements. We show that SSR can be used effectively in programmable graphics architectures to allow double-precision computation without affecting the performance of single-precision calculations and to increase fragment shader performance with a minimal impact on chip area.