Jacob Ström
Ericsson Research

Per Wennersten
Ericsson Research

Jim Rasmusson
Lund University /
Ericsson Research

Jon Hasselgren
Lund University

Jacob Munkberg
Lund University

Petrik Clarberg
Lund University

Abstract

This paper presents what we believe are the first (public) algorithms for floating-point (fp) color and fp depth buffer compression. The depth codec is also available in an integer version. The codecs are harmonized, meaning that they share basic technology, making it easier to use the same hardware unit for both types of compression. We further suggest to use these codecs in a unified codec architecture, meaning that compression/decompression units previously only used for color- and depth buffer compression can be used also during texture accesses. Finally, we investigate the bandwidth implication of using this in a unified cache architecture. The proposed fp16 color buffer codec compresses data down to 40% of the original, and the fp16 depth codec allows compression down to 4.5 bpp, compared to 5.3 for the state-of-the-art int24 depth compression method. If used in a unified codec and cache architecture, bandwidth reductions of about 50% are possible, which is significant.

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