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In the Forums... |
Posted: February 25, 2001 Written by: Tuan "Solace" Nguyen Vertex Programming There’s another new feature that NVIDIA has implemented into the recently announced GeForce3, and it’s called a programmable vertex shader. With a traditional graphics pipeline, each stage in the pipeline has predefined functions, and those functions are carried out systematically. If the developer wanted to manipulate a stage to do what’s desired, it’s not possible. Here’s a diagram of a traditional graphics pipeline:  It’s also possible that each stage has certain modes of operations, again, also already predefined and hard coded into the GPU itself. This limits the possibilities of generating a custom experimental look. It also makes it more difficult to do special effects on the GPU. Anything that’s not already defined must be done on the system CPU, taking away precious CPU cycles. So how does NVIDIA want to change things? They do it by enabling the ability to dynamically change the pipeline.  This type of technique gives total control to the developer. They can dynamically use assembly code that can be injected straight into the pipeline, reprogram it to the desired settings, and then continue the process. This effectively makes the pipeline unique to a programmer. It’s almost like having a different graphics card for every game, doing what the game needs. |
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