JP5178562B2 - Drawing control device - Google Patents

Description

  The present invention relates to a drawing control apparatus that realizes drawing processing with priority and drawing interrupt processing in drawing processing for drawing graphics, characters, and the like.

  Conventionally, in drawing processing that draws graphics or characters, when implementing drawing processing with priority or drawing interrupt processing, when shifting from low priority processing to high processing, low priority processing is being executed The hardware is temporarily stopped, the processing information in the hardware is saved, the processing with high priority is executed and finished, the information of processing with low priority is restored, and the processing with low priority is executed. (See, for example, Patent Document 1, Patent Document 2, and Patent Document 3).

JP-A-7-271344 Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 11-133944 JP 2007-241629 A

  Conventional graphics processing devices employ a method in which hardware is temporarily stopped and internal information is temporarily saved. Therefore, it is necessary that the graphics drawing hardware can cope with the interrupt processing, the hardware operation state information can be saved and restored, and drawing can be resumed from the middle of the drawing processing. However, current graphics processing has many state states such as three-dimensional graphics and vector graphics, and many state states possessed in hardware. In addition, the processing pipeline is deep, and considering the possibility of accepting interrupt processing in a re-operable state and the save time in software, there are very few hardware execution environments that can realize this.

  If there is no such hardware execution environment, an interrupt cannot be accepted during the drawing process, and it is necessary to wait for the end of the currently operating process to execute the next process. When the occupation time of drawing hardware such as a large amount of three-dimensional drawing and map drawing is long, there is a problem that it is not possible to cope with a request with high priority for urgent display.

  The present invention has been made to solve the above-described problems. Even in an environment where hardware does not support interrupts or the like, the time from when a high-priority process occurs until the start of execution of the process is reduced. It is an object of the present invention to obtain a drawing control device that can be shortened.

A drawing control apparatus according to the present invention includes a drawing command generating unit with priority and a drawing command generating unit with priority for setting a drawing priority for a plurality of drawing regions by each drawing processing command displayed on the screen. A queue that updates the drawing process command output order according to the priority of the new drawing process command when a new drawing process command is input during storage. And command grouping means for grouping drawing processing commands of the same application with respect to the drawing processing commands output by the drawing command generating means with priority and outputting the command processing group as a command group to the queuing means .

The drawing control apparatus according to the present invention updates the output order of drawing process commands according to the priority of the new drawing process command when a new drawing process command is input while the drawing process commands are being accumulated. Therefore, even in an environment where the hardware does not support interrupts or the like, it is possible to reduce the time from the time when processing with high priority occurs until the start of processing execution.
In addition, since the drawing processing commands output by the drawing command generating means with priority are provided with the command grouping means for grouping the drawing processing commands of the same application and outputting them to the queue means as a command group, The number of state changes that occur due to the difference can be reduced, and as a result, high-speed operation can be performed.

It is a block diagram which shows the drawing control apparatus by Embodiment 1 of this invention. It is explanatory drawing which shows the drawing image and state of a queue of the drawing control apparatus by Embodiment 1 of this invention. It is explanatory drawing which shows the state of a drawing image and a queue when the window system of the drawing control apparatus by Embodiment 1 of this invention is operate | moving. It is explanatory drawing which shows the state of a queue when a high priority process generate | occur | produces during the queuing time of the drawing control apparatus by Embodiment 1 of this invention. It is a block diagram of the drawing control apparatus by Embodiment 2 of this invention. It is a block diagram of the drawing control apparatus by Embodiment 3 of this invention. It is explanatory drawing which shows command grouping of the monitoring control apparatus by Embodiment 3 of this invention. It is a block diagram which shows the modification of the drawing control apparatus by Embodiment 3 of this invention.

Embodiment 1 FIG.
FIG. 1 is a block diagram showing a drawing control apparatus according to Embodiment 1 of the present invention.
The drawing control apparatus shown in FIG. 1 includes a calculation unit 100, a system memory 200, a drawing processor 300, and a drawing memory 400. The calculation unit 100 is a calculation unit that executes a plurality of application programs and a plurality of tasks on an operating system (OS), and includes a combination of hardware such as CPU and memory, software corresponding to various functions, or dedicated hardware. The drawing command generation unit 101 with priority and the queue unit 102 are configured. The drawing command generation unit 101 with priority is a unit that gives priority to a drawing processing command (drawing command or drawing control command) generated by the calculation unit 100. The queuing means 102 includes a queue (not shown) for queuing each drawing processing command, accumulates the drawing processing commands sent from the drawing command generating means 101 with priority, and creates a new one during the accumulation. When a drawing process command is input, the output order of the drawing process command (order in the queue) is updated in accordance with the priority of the new drawing process command.

  The system memory 200 is a memory for holding instruction codes and data of the arithmetic unit 100. The drawing processor 300 is a drawing called a graphics accelerator, a graphics engine, a GPU (Graphics Processing Unit) that can handle two-dimensional drawing processing such as straight line drawing and area transfer, three-dimensional graphics processing, vector graphics processing, and the like. Processor. The drawing memory 400 is a memory used when the drawing processor 300 performs drawing.

Next, the operation of the drawing control apparatus according to the first embodiment will be described.
In the arithmetic unit 100, a plurality of applications and tasks of a plurality of drawing systems are operating on the OS, and each application or task issues a drawing request for character drawing, figure drawing, or drawing control to the drawing processor 300. This drawing request may correspond to a drawing command or a drawing control command, or may correspond to a drawing processing command group. Drawing commands include line drawing, polygon drawing, color change, line width change, and the like, and drawing control commands include screen update and flip operation. The drawing process command group is a combination of a plurality of drawing commands and drawing control commands, and is a command group such as color change + line width change + line drawing + color change + polygon drawing + flip. In the following description, the simple command refers to a drawing command, a drawing control command, and a drawing processing command group.

The drawing request is input to the drawing command generating unit 101 with priority, and the priority is given to the commands constituting the drawing request. The priority is set higher for the command corresponding to the one to be processed first. The priority can be arbitrarily set in the application or the drawing system.
The commands constituting the drawing request to which the priority is given are sent to the queue means 102 connected to the drawing command generating means 101 with priority. The queue means 102 compares the priority of the command accumulated in the queue with the priority of the newly input command, and inserts the command at an appropriate position. The appropriate insertion position is after the command with a priority higher than the priority of the input command, and if it is a drawing command, the overlapping command if the drawing area overlaps the drawing area of the command contained in the queue If it is a drawing control command, it is after the last command subject to drawing control.

2A and 2B are explanatory diagrams showing the state of the drawing image and the queue. FIG. 2A shows a case where there is no overlapping of windows, and FIG.
As shown in FIG. 2A, when the command 5 having a high priority does not overlap with the drawing area of the command included in the pre-insertion queue, there is no processing higher than the priority, so the command 5 is inserted at the head of the queue. On the other hand, as shown in FIG. 2B, when the command 5 having a high priority overlaps with the drawing areas of the command 1 and the command 2 included in the queue, the command 5 is inserted after the command 2. These are determined at correct insertion positions in order to maintain a correct drawing image.

  The queue unit 102 sequentially transfers commands to the drawing processor 300, and the drawing processor 300 performs drawing on the drawing memory 400 by processing the input command. As a result, high priority processing is processed before commands generated in advance, and interrupt processing can be realized.

In the present embodiment, the drawing processor 300 performs drawing in the drawing memory 400, but the system is also effective when drawing is performed in the system memory 200 without the drawing memory 400.
In addition, when a window system for managing a drawing area is operating in the arithmetic unit 100, a priority-added drawing command generation unit 101 generates a command with priority in consideration of the drawing area.
FIG. 3 is an explanatory diagram showing a drawing image and a queue state in this case.
As illustrated, window A and window B are set on the screen. Assume that commands to window A are command 1 and command 2, commands to window B are command 3 and command 4, and commands 1 to 4 are held in order in queue means 102. In this situation, when a command 5 with a high priority for the window A is generated, the queue means 102 inserts the command 5 after the command 2 that is a command to the window A. That is, as shown in FIG. 3, when the window management system is operating, it is possible to perform rough distribution by detecting which window is entered, and to detect the overlapping of the drawing areas of individual commands. Simplify the process without doing so. At this time, since the overlapping of the drawing areas of the commands in the window is not detected, the commands in the window need to be sequentially arranged, and the command 5 is inserted after the command 2 while maintaining the drawing order.

  Further, even when the window system for managing the drawing area is operating as shown in FIG. 3, if the high priority processing is the drawing command, the overlapping of the drawing areas in the window is further determined. The order of drawing can be raised. In the case shown in FIG. 3, the drawing area of command 5 does not overlap with command 1 or command 2, so it can be inserted before command 1. In the case of a drawing control command, the order of control processing can be increased by placing it behind the command to be controlled.

  In addition, the queue unit 102 transfers a command when a process to the drawing processor 300 is received, but the queue unit 102 has a predetermined queuing time set. During this queuing time, the command is held in the queuing means 102 and the command is not transferred to the drawing processor 300. During this queuing time, a command having a high priority is received, and priority processing is performed between commands held in the queue means 102. That is, as shown in FIG. 4, when the commands 1 and 2 are queued and the queuing time has elapsed, the processing of the commands 1 and 2 is performed at time T1. In addition, when a command 5 having a high priority is generated during the queuing time of the commands 3 and 4, the command processing is preceded by the command 5 (time T2). In this way, since the command 3 that takes a relatively long drawing time is held within the queuing time, the command 5 having a high priority can be inserted before the command 3, and is executed from the occurrence of the processing having a high priority. It becomes possible to shorten the time until.

  As described above, according to the drawing control apparatus of the first embodiment, the drawing command generating unit with priority for setting the drawing priority order for a plurality of drawing regions by each drawing processing command displayed on the screen, The drawing processing command sent from the drawing command generating means with priority is accumulated, and when a new drawing processing command is input during the accumulation, the drawing processing command is processed according to the priority of the new drawing processing command. Queue means for updating the command output order, so that even in environments where hardware does not support interrupts, etc., the time from when high-priority processing occurs until the start of processing execution is shortened Can do.

  Further, according to the drawing control apparatus of the first embodiment, the queue means draws a drawing process command having a high priority when there is a drawing area to be drawn behind the drawing area of the drawing process command having a high priority. A drawing process command with a higher priority is output after the drawing process command for the drawing area that overlaps the rear of the area, so that even if the drawing areas overlap, the correct drawing image can be maintained. .

Embodiment 2. FIG.
FIG. 5 shows a drawing control apparatus according to Embodiment 2 of the present invention.
The drawing control apparatus according to the second embodiment includes an execution time table 103, a maximum processing time register 104, a command in addition to the configuration of the drawing command generating means 101 with priority and the queue means 102 according to the first embodiment as the arithmetic unit 100a. Subdividing means 105 is provided. The execution time table 103 is a table that holds a processing time value for each drawing processing command (drawing command or drawing control command). The maximum processing time register 104 is a register that holds a value of the maximum processing time common to each drawing processing command. The command subdividing unit 105 obtains the processing time of the drawing process command with respect to the drawing processing command output from the drawing command generating unit 101 with priority by referring to the execution time table 103, and obtains the maximum processing time. When the maximum processing time of the time register 104 is exceeded, the drawing processing command is subdivided. Since other configurations are the same as those of the first embodiment, the corresponding parts are denoted by the same reference numerals and description thereof is omitted.

Next, the operation of the drawing control apparatus according to the second embodiment will be described.
The execution time table 103 stores the processing time required for each processing command (drawing command and drawing control command) in a table, and the drawing time can be read from the drawing processing command. In a command in which the drawing area, drawing conditions, etc. are related to drawing time, the drawing time per unit is held, and the drawing time can be estimated by calculation using the drawing area and drawing condition coefficients.

  The drawing process command given priority in the drawing command generating means 101 with priority is input to the command subdividing means 105. The command subdividing means 105 analyzes what kind of command the drawing processing command is configured, and refers to the execution time table 103 to estimate the processing time required for the command. Next, it is determined whether or not the estimated time exceeds the maximum processing time held in the maximum processing time register 104. If it exceeds, the command is subdivided. For example, in the case of a command for clearing the screen, the time taken for one command is suppressed within the time indicated by the maximum processing time register 104 by dividing the area to be cleared. Thereby, when processing with high priority occurs, the time lag until the processing is executed can be suppressed to the time held in the maximum processing time register 104.

  As described above, according to the drawing control apparatus of the second embodiment, the execution time table that holds the processing time value for each drawing processing command, and the maximum processing time value that is common to each drawing processing command. For the drawing process command output by the processing time register and the drawing command generating means with priority, the processing time of the drawing process command is obtained by referring to the execution time table, and the obtained processing time exceeds the maximum processing time. In this case, since a command segmentation means for segmenting the drawing process command is provided, it is possible to further shorten the time from the time when a process with high priority occurs to the start of the process execution.

Embodiment 3 FIG.
FIG. 6 shows a drawing control apparatus according to Embodiment 3 of the present invention.
The drawing control apparatus according to the third embodiment includes a command grouping unit 106 as the arithmetic unit 100b in addition to the configuration of the drawing command generating unit 101 with priority and the queue unit 102 according to the first embodiment. The command grouping unit 106 is configured to group drawing processing commands of the same application with respect to the drawing processing commands output from the drawing command generating unit 101 with priority, and output the grouped commands to the queue unit 102 as a command group. .

Next, the operation of the drawing control apparatus according to the third embodiment will be described.
In the drawing processor 300, processing as a group of drawing processing commands can be executed faster than when individual drawing processing commands (drawing commands and drawing control commands) are sent and processed. However, there are cases where drawing commands generated from a plurality of applications are arranged alternately. This occurs, for example, when a plurality of windows are opened and a graphics animation is displayed in both windows as in a Windows application (Windows is a registered trademark). In such a case, animation drawing commands are generated from the two applications and accumulated in the queue.

  Thus, when drawing commands are arranged alternately, it is necessary to switch the state of the drawing processor for each command, resulting in poor efficiency and degraded performance. Here, the state is called a drawing attribute and indicates a window position, size, drawing color, line type (solid line / broken line), and the like. In general, since the same drawing attribute is often used for a plurality of drawing commands, the drawing attribute is not set for each drawing command but is executed at the head of the drawing command using the same drawing attribute. If a drawing command of a different application is interrupted on the way, it is necessary to change the drawing attribute frequently, and the performance deteriorates.

  For this reason, it is possible to execute the processing at a higher speed as a group of commands that can be processed in the same state. This process is executed by the command grouping means 106. For example, as shown in FIG. 7, when commands 1, 3, and 5 generated by application A with hatching and commands 2 and 4 generated by application B are alternately arranged, the state is changed each time the command is switched. There is a need. Therefore, the command grouping means 106 groups the commands 1, 3 and 5 of the application A and the commands 2 and 4 of the application B into a command group. As a result, the number of state changes is reduced and the speed can be increased.

In the above example, the command grouping means 106 is provided for the configuration of the first embodiment. However, as shown in FIG. 8, the command grouping means 106 may be provided for the configuration of the second embodiment. .
In the calculation unit 100c of the drawing control apparatus shown in FIG. 8, the execution time table 103a holds the execution time of the drawing process command group together with the execution time for each drawing process command. The maximum processing time register 104a holds the maximum processing time value of the drawing processing command group together with the maximum processing time of the drawing processing command. The command segmentation unit 105 a performs processing on the output of the command grouping unit 106. That is, the command subdividing unit 105a refers to the execution time table 103a for the drawing processing command or drawing processing command group output from the command grouping unit 106, and determines the processing time of the drawing processing command or drawing processing command group. If the calculated processing time exceeds the maximum processing time of the maximum processing time register 104a, the drawing processing command or the drawing processing command group is subdivided.

  As described above, according to the drawing control apparatus of the third embodiment, the drawing processing commands of the same application are grouped with respect to the drawing processing commands output from the drawing command generating means with priority, and the commands are grouped in the queuing means. Since the command grouping means for outputting is provided, the number of state changes that occur due to different applications and tasks can be reduced, and as a result, high-speed operation can be performed.

  In addition, according to the drawing control apparatus of the third embodiment, an execution time table that holds a processing time value for each drawing process command or drawing process command group, and a maximum process common to each drawing process command or drawing process command group The processing time of the drawing processing command or drawing processing command group is referred to the execution time table for the maximum processing time register for holding the time value and the drawing processing command or drawing processing command group output by the command grouping means. When the calculated processing time exceeds the maximum processing time, since it has a command subdivision means for subdividing the drawing processing command or the drawing processing command group, when processing with high priority occurs, The time lag from occurrence to processing execution can be shortened.

  100, 100a, 100b, 100c arithmetic unit, 101 drawing command generation means with priority, 102 queue means, 103, 103a execution time table, 104, 104a maximum processing time register, 105, 105a command segmentation means, 106 command grouping Means, 200 system memory, 300 drawing processor, 400 drawing memory.

Claims (3)

Drawing command generating means with priority for setting drawing priority for a plurality of drawing areas by each drawing processing command displayed on the screen;
The drawing processing command sent from the drawing command generating means with priority is accumulated, and when a new drawing processing command is inputted during the accumulation, the drawing processing command is processed according to the priority of the new drawing processing command. A queue means for updating the output order of commands ;
A drawing control apparatus comprising: a command grouping unit that groups drawing processing commands of the same application with respect to a drawing processing command output by a drawing command generating unit with priority and outputs the command group to a queue unit as a command group .   If there is a drawing area to be drawn behind the drawing area of the drawing process command with high priority, the queue means draws the drawing area overlapping the drawing area of the drawing process command with high priority. The drawing control apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the drawing processing command having a high priority is output after the command. An execution time table that holds a processing time value for each drawing processing command or drawing processing command group;
A maximum processing time register that holds a value of a maximum processing time common to each drawing processing command or drawing processing command group;
For the drawing processing command or drawing processing command group output by the command grouping unit, the processing time of the drawing processing command or drawing processing command group is obtained by referring to the execution time table, and the obtained processing time is the maximum 3. The drawing control apparatus according to claim 1 , further comprising command subdividing means for subdividing the drawing processing command or the drawing processing command group when the processing time is exceeded.

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