Graphics Algorithms on Field Programmable Function Arrays

Abstract

The amount of energy consumed in basic CMOS building blocks, like external RAM, external bus-structures, multipliers, local (cache) memory and on chip bus-structures, is analyzed thoroughly to find ways for substantial improvement of the power consumption of high speed graphics algorithms: A Field Programmable Function Array capable of low-power execution of a wide range of algorithms is introduced. Aspects of the compilation of the volume rendering algorithm to this architecture are discussed.