A 210mW graphics LSI implementing full 3D pipeline with 264Mtexels/s texturing for mobile multimedia applications

Abstract—A 121-mm2 graphics LSI is designed and imple-mented for portable two-dimensional (2-D) and three-dimensional (3-D) graphics and MPEG-4 applications. The LSI contains a RISC processor with a multiply-accumulate unit (MAC), a 3-D rendering engine, a programmable power optimizer, and 29-Mb embedded DRAM. The chip is built in a 0.16- m pure DRAM technology to reduce the fabrication cost. Texture-mapped 3-D graphics with perspective-correct address calculation and bilinear MIPMAP filtering can be realized while consuming the low power with the help of depth-first clock gating, address alignment logic, and embedded DRAM. Programmable clocking allows the LSI to operate in lower power modes for various applications. The chip consumes less than 210 mW, delivering 66 Mpixels/s and 264 Mtexel/s texture-mapped pixels with real-time special effects such as full-scene antialiasing and motion blur. Index Terms—Low-power electronics, mobile application, portable, PDA, embedded DRAM, texture mapping, three-dimen-sional (3-D) graphics rendering. I