Graphics Processor for CPU + FPGA

Hardware acceleration of graphics tasks for CPU + FPGA platforms.

Hardware

The included hardware design is for an Altera SoC FPGA platform. 1, 2, 4 or 8 rendering cores are supported. Firmware for the Clarvi soft processor is included to implement triangle-rendering on the FPGA.

Software

Two Linux kernel drivers for the host CPU are included:

• workqueue: Workqueue driver, for sending rendering commands to the graphics processor core(s).
• vsync: Interrupt-driven double-buffering and control over the 256-colour palette.

A C++ 3D graphics library (3dlib) provides abstraction over these drivers, and supports rendering on the host CPU for comparison.

Several demo programs are included:

• 3ddemo: render a pair of 3D models to test 3D rendering performance.
• game: a 3D castle scene with movement controls (if enabled in the hardware design)
• triangles: 2D random triangle rendering to test 2D rendering performance.

Scripts

build.sh

./build.sh <num_cores> Configure the hardware design for the chosen number of rendering cores, and compile it.

test.sh

Compile and run benchmarks with each rendering algorithm on the remote hardware.

run_test.sh

Setup the device drivers and execute the set of benchmarks.

hardware_setup.sh

Compile and re-insert both kernel drivers. Used by the run_test.sh script.