Low-power polygon renderer for computer graphics

Polygon rasterization is the most computational and memory intense stage in rendering synthesized computer images. The authors present a low-power, real-time hardware implementation for this task. Rasterization of two-dimensional Gouraud-shaded polygons at 90,000 polygons/sec is achievable with computational power consumption of about 12 mW at 1.5 V operation, using an array configuration of 16 render engines for a 512 /spl times/ 512-pixel frame. A transmission format for wireless implementations is proposed with a typical bandwidth of 4 MHz. This screen and format configurable design has potential applications in portable devices, wireless communication and head-mounted display for virtual reality systems.<
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