System and Method for Processing Graphics Operations with Graphics Processing Unit

Abstract

Disclosed is a system and method for processing graphic operations on a plurality of data structures of an image with a graphics processing unit and memory. The disclosed techniques of the system and method create an accumulation buffer of the data structures for accumulating changes to the data structures. A separate buffer is then created from at least a portion of the data structures of the accumulation buffer. The disclosed techniques read the data structures from the separate buffer with the graphics processing unit. The graphics processing unit operates on the data structures read from the separate buffer with the operation. Then, the disclosed techniques write the results of the operation onto the portion of the accumulation buffer corresponding to the separate buffer.

1 . A method of processing an operation on data with a graphics processing unit and memory, the method comprising the steps of:
 a) creating an accumulation buffer of the data for accumulating changes to the data;   b) reading a portion of the data of the accumulation buffer with the graphics processing unit;   c) creating results by operating on the data with the operation using the graphics processing unit; and   d) writing the results onto the portion of the data in the accumulation buffer.   
   
   
       2 . The method of  claim 1 , further comprising
 creating a separate buffer from the portion of the data of the accumulation buffer before reading the portion of the data in step (b),   whereby the method includes:
 b) reading the data from the separate buffer with the graphics processing unit; 
 c) creating the results by operating on the data read from the separate buffer with the operation using the graphics processing unit; and 
 d) writing the results onto the portion of the data of the accumulation buffer corresponding to the separate buffer. 
   
   
   
       3 . The method of  claim 2 , wherein creating the separate buffer from the at least a portion of the data of the accumulation buffer comprises the step of reading an area-of-effect from the accumulation buffer, the area-of-effect corresponding substantially to the data to be affected by the operation. 
   
   
       4 . The method of  claim 2 , further comprising the step of ensuring that the accumulation buffer is not being read/modified/or written by another process before creating the separate buffer. 
   
   
       5 . The method of  claim 1 , wherein the accumulation buffer comprises a plurality of data structures for the data, the data structures representing color values, vector values, or scalar values of an image. 
   
   
       6 . The method of  claim 1 , wherein the accumulation buffer comprises a layer of an image, at least a portion of the image, or a vector field of the image. 
   
   
       7 . The method of  claim 1 , wherein the accumulation buffer comprises a plurality of data structures for the data, the data structures having a plurality of 16-bit integer, 16-bit floating point, or 32-bit floating point components for the data. 
   
   
       8 . The method of  claim 1 , wherein the data in the accumulation buffer comprise pixels of an image. 
   
   
       9 . The method of  claim 1 , wherein creating the accumulation buffer of the data for accumulating changes to the data comprises reading the data from an initial image and storing the read data in memory. 
   
   
       10 . The method of  claim 1 , wherein the operation comprises an item to be applied to the accumulation buffer, the item including a paint stroke, a dab, a light source, a warp, ray tracing, or a local blur. 
   
   
       11 . The method of  claim 10 , wherein the operation comprises an application technique corresponding to how the item is to be applied to the accumulation buffer, the application technique including addition of a light field, addition of a vector displacement field, or overlay of brush colors. 
   
   
       12 . The method of  claim 1 , further comprising the step of applying the accumulation buffer to an initial image. 
   
   
       13 . A method of processing an operation on data with a graphics processing unit and memory, the method comprising the steps of:
 creating an accumulation buffer of the data for accumulating changes to the data;   creating a separate buffer from at least a portion of the data of the accumulation buffer; and   operating on the data of the separate buffer with one or more programs on the graphics processing unit by reading the data from the separate buffer with the programs and writing results of the operation to the accumulation buffer with the programs.   
   
   
       14 - 28 . (canceled) 
   
   
       29 . A method of processing a graphics operation on an initial image with a graphics processing unit and memory, the method comprising the steps of:
 creating an accumulation buffer with data of the initial image for accumulating changes to the data;   computing the graphic operation by overlaying individual effects;   wherein for each individual effect, the method includes the steps of:
 copying only the data in the accumulation buffer affected by the each individual effect into a separate buffer, 
 computing results of the each individual effect using the data in the separate buffer, and 
 writing the results into accumulation buffer at the corresponding data in the accumulation buffer affected by the each individual effect. 
   
   
   
       30 - 45 . (canceled)