HP Visualize c160L Overview of the Visualize fx graphics - Page 1

An Overview of the VISUALIZE fx Graphics Accelerator Hardware Noel D. Scott Daniel M. Olsen Ethan W. Gannett Three graphics accelerator products with different levels of performance are based on varying combinations of five custom integrated circuits. In addition, these products are the first ones from Hewlett-Packard to provide native acceleration for the OpenGL® API. The VISUALIZE fx family of graphics subsystems consists of three products, fx6, fx4, and fx2, and an optional hardware texture mapping module. These products are built around a common architecture using the same custom integrated circuits. The primary difference between these controllers is the number of custom chips used in each product (see Table I). Table I Number of custom chips in the different VISUALIZE fx products Product fx2 fx4 fx6 Texture Chip - 1 2 Geometry Chip 1 2 3 Raster Chip 2 2 4 A chip-level block diagram of the VISUALIZE fx6 product is shown in Figure 1. This is the most complex configuration and also the one with the highest performance in the product line. The VISUALIZE fx4 and the VISUALIZE fx2 products use subsets of the chips used in the fx6. The fx6 and fx4 subsystems have support for the optional hardware-accelerated texture map module, which contains a local texture cache for storage of texture map images. If the texture accelerator is not present, the bus between the interface chip and the first raster chip is directly connected. Article 4 • © 1998 Hewlett Packard Company 28 May 1998 • The Hewlett-Packard Journal