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INTRODUCTION

Developers of 3D graphics applications have always had difficulty creating realistic

computer generated characters, objects and environments that can be interacted with in real
time. The limitation has been a lack of available processing power combined with the
restricted flexibility afforded by existing graphics hardware. There has always been a trade-
off between performing operations on the CPU, which allows more flexibility due to its
general and programmable nature, and the graphics processor, which allows better
performance due to its hardwired and heavily optimized architecture. While the rapidly
increasing speed of graphics processors has enabled a significant amount of progress, and
while they have been steadily taking over many of the tasks formerly handled by the CPU,
there are many interesting and useful graphical techniques that have remained out of reach
because they require a combination of speed and flexibility that neither existing CPUs or
graphics processors could adequately provide.

What is needed is a technology that combines the speed and optimizations of a

dedicated graphics processor with the flexibility and programmability of a CPU, allowing a
virtually infinite range of visual effects at interactive frame rates. The first attempts at
introducing this kind of technology were successful in increasing the number of effects
available to developers, but still suffered from a number of limitations in terms of both
versatility and performance. SMARTSHADER™ technology, developed by ATI, removes
these limitations to free developers’ imaginations.

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SMARTSHADER™ Technology

SMARTSHADER™ technology brings a new level of graphical effects to personal

computers. It allows software developers to use techniques that, until recently, were only
available to the creators of non-interactive computer generated movies and special effects,
and bring them to interactive computer games, the world wide web, and digital content
creation applications.

ATI’s SMARTSHADER™ technology represents a new generation of

programmable, hardware-accelerated graphics pipelines. The technology was developed
with a keen eye toward maximizing efficiency and minimizing common performance
bottlenecks, especially memory bandwidth.

SMARTSHADER™ technology is an extension of the Vertex Shader and Pixel

Shader programming languages first introduced by Microsoft in DirectX® 8.0. While these
shader languages were a good first attempt at bringing programmability to graphics
hardware, experimentation revealed that they had a number of limitations that offered many
opportunities for improvement.

Incorporating suggestions from leading 3D application developers and researchers,

ATI worked closely with Microsoft to improve the flexibility, efficiency, and usability of
the DirectX® 8.0 shader languages. The results are being made available to developers for
the first time with the release of DirectX® 8.1, which reveals the full capabilities of
SMARTSHADER™ technology. For developers that prefer to work with OpenGL®, the
full SMARTSHADER™ feature set is also accessible using custom extensions provided by
ATI.

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The key improvements offered by ATI’s SMARTSHADER™ technology over

existing hardware vertex and pixel shader implementations are:

• Support for up to six textures in a single rendering pass, allowing more complex
effects to be achieved without the heavy memory bandwidth requirements and
severe performance impact of multi-pass rendering
• A simplified yet more powerful instruction set that lets developers design a much
wider ranger of graphical effects with fewer operations.
• Pixel shaders up to 22 instructions in length (compared to 12 instructions in
DirectX® 8.0 Pixel Shaders) allow more accurate simulation of the visual properties
of materials
• Ability to perform mathematical operations on texture addresses as well as color
values, enabling new types and combinations of lighting and texturing effects that
were previously impossible.

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PROGRAMMABLE SHADERS AND FIXED FUNCTION EFFECTS

Graphics APIs like DirectX® and OpenGL® have historically consisted of a set of
fixed functions. By calling a function and passing it a set of parameters, a developer could
cause things to be drawn on the screen in a certain way. Graphics processors could
accelerate these functions using hard-wired circuitry, which can perform the calculations
for fixed functions very quickly. As graphics hardware became more complex and
powerful, new functions were added to the APIs to give developers access to new features
and visual effects.
This process worked reasonably well, but it caused a major gap to develop between
the time new features were conceived and the time an end-user could see the result. For
example, consider an imaginary new 3D graphics technique called Feature X. Before an
end-user can experience the benefits of Feature X, someone first has to design the
algorithm, and perhaps publish a research paper on the subject. If Feature X looks
promising, then a graphics chip designer has to think of an efficient way to implement
support for it in hardware. Once the hardware design is near completion, someone has to
implement support for Feature X in the major APIs to make it accessible to application
developers. Finally, the developers have to determine how to use Feature X in their
application, test it, optimize it, and ship a product with the feature enabled.
This process can take several years, and slows the pace of innovation (see Figure 1).

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Programmable shaders represent a new way of doing things that can substantially
decrease the time it takes to bring innovative new graphics ideas to the end-user. Shaders
are small programs that application developers can write and use to determine how things
are drawn on the screen.
This means that immediately after the idea for Feature X is thought of, a developer
can write a shader to add that feature into their application without having to wait for new
graphics hardware or new versions of their preferred graphics API. Bypassing these steps
can cut years off of the time it takes to develop new features and deliver them to end-users
(see Figure 2).

It is also possible to write shaders that duplicate or replace existing fixed functions,
such as Environment Mapped Bump Mapping or Matrix Palette Skinning. Although the
shader versions of these functions can sometimes run slightly slower than the fixed
versions, the ability to tweak and optimize the shaders to fit each particular application can
provide many other benefits. For example, fixed function matrix palette skinning is limited
to four matrices per vertex in DirectX® 8.0, whereas matrix palette skinning using vertex
shaders can handle dozens of matrices per vertex if necessary. The result is that skeletally
animated characters with more than four bones can be animated as a whole rather than one
piece at a time, letting animators work more quickly and easily.

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THE 3D GRAPHICS PIPELINE

Drawing 3D graphics involves numerous steps that are performed one after the
other. These steps can be thought of like an assembly line; or a pipeline. The 3D graphics
pipeline can be broken down into two main stages: the geometry processing stage, and the
rendering stage.
All 3D graphics start as a set of models created by an artist, which are represented
using a series of interconnected points known as vertices. These vertices are stored as
chunks of data that contain several pieces of information about themselves, such as their
position, color, texture, reflectivity, etc. Once a software application determines what
objects will be present in the 3D scene being drawn and how they are arranged, the
appropriate vertex data is sent to the geometry processing stage, as shown in Figure 3.

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When using a graphics chip that supports hardware accelerated transform and
lighting (T&L), the geometry processing stage takes place on the GPU; otherwise, it is
handled by the CPU.
Geometry processing involves calculations that modify or, in some cases, create new
data for vertices. At this point, either fixed function transform and lighting operations or
programmable vertex shaders can be used to perform a specified set of operations on every
incoming vertex. These operations can be executed on the CPU if they are not supported by
the graphics hardware, but this almost always results in greatly reduced performance.
Once the vertices have passed through the geometry processing stage, they must then
be passed on to the rendering stage for conversion into pixels. The image that appears on a
display is composed of a two-dimensional array of pixels, each of which is assigned a
color. The job of the rendering stage is to convert three-dimensional vertex data into two-
dimensional pixel data. This is accomplished by first linking the vertices together to form
triangles, then filling in each triangle with pixels of the appropriate color. The color of each
pixel has to be chosen carefully to give the 2D image the appearance of depth and texture.
This can be accomplished by using either fixed function texturing, filtering and blending
instructions, or by using programmable pixel shaders.
The rendering stage also blends in fog if desired, and performs visibility testing to
determine if each pixel is hidden, partially visible, or fully visible. After the rendering stage
is completed the final colors of each pixel in the rendered image are written to a block of
memory called the frame buffer. From this point, the image can either be sent back through
the pipeline again for further processing, or sent to a display device for viewing.
Now that we have described how vertex and pixel shaders fit into the 3D graphics
pipeline, we can look at how each of them works in more detail.

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VERTEX SHADERS

Vertex shaders are small programs or sets of instructions that are performed on
vertex data as it passes through the geometry processing pipeline. With ATI’s
SMARTSHADER™ technology, each vertex can consist of up to 16 distinct pieces of data,
which are read by the vertex shader as individual streams. These pieces of data can contain
positional co-ordinates, texture co-ordinates, lighting values, weighting values for matrix
skinning, or anything else the developer desires. A vertex shader program can have a
maximum length of 128 instructions, and make use of up to 96 constant values and 12
temporary data registers. These specifications provide ample ability to perform a huge
range of transformations on incoming vertex data. The actual instructions are very similar
to those found in CPU assembly language and allow for easy manipulation of vertex
data.Figure 4 gives a detailed description of the SMARTSHADER™ vertex shader
architecture.

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VERTEX SHADER EFFECTS

Through the implementation of vertex shaders a huge variety of new graphics effects
are now possible. Most of these effects involve modifications to the shape or position of
objects, although they can also be used to modify the appearance of surfaces in conjunction
with pixel shaders.
Vertex shaders can also be optimized in many cases to provide superior performance
to fixed function T&L operations. A few examples of vertex shader effects are described
below.
Procedural Deformation
Many objects in the real world change shape according to simple mathematical
functions. These functions can be modeled using vertex shaders and applied to the position
of each vertex in an object to create highly realistic, procedural animation. This has a wide
range of applications including water waves, flags and capes that blow in the wind, and
wobbling objects like soap bubbles (see Figures 5 & 6).

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SHADOW VOLUMES

Shadows are a very important part of any scene, since they help convey a sense of
depth and atmosphere. Vertex shaders provide a simple way of generating convincing
shadows that can be fully animated and extended to multiple light sources. The shader is
used to create transparent volumes that extend behind objects away from any light sources,
creating shadows where the volumes contact other surfaces. The closer the light source is to
the shadow-casting object, the darker the shadow is. See Figure 7 below.

Other vertex shader effects include, but are not limited to:
• Fur Rendering – grow realistic fur from any object that can be made to curl or blow in the
wind if desired.
• Particle Systems – animate large numbers of small particles by assigning and modifying
physical properties such as mass, velocity, acceleration, etc. Useful for modeling fire,
sparks, explosions, smoke, rain, snow, and more.
• Lens Effects – distort an image as if it were being viewed through a lens.
• Matrix Palette Skinning – allow skeletally animated characters with many bones to move
freely and bend naturally.
• Advanced Keyframe Interpolation – perform animation and morphing effects using
nonlinear blending between two or more keyframes. Useful for modeling complex facial
expressions and speech.

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PIXEL SHADERS

Pixel shaders are small programs that are executed on individual pixels as they pass
through the rendering pipeline. With SMARTSHADER™ technology, up to six different
textures can be sampled and manipulated in a single rendering pass to determine the color
of a pixel. Textures can be one-dimensional, two-dimensional, or three-dimensional arrays
of values stored in memory.
Each value in a texture is called a texel, and although they are most commonly used
to store color values, they can contain any kind of data desired including normal vectors
(for bump maps), shadow values, or look-up tables. A pixel shader program can have a
maximum length of 22 instructions, and make use of up to eight constant values and six
temporary data registers. These specifications provide ample ability to perform a huge
range of transformations on incoming vertex data. The actual instructions are very similar
to those found in CPU assembly language and allow for easy manipulation of pixel data.
Figure 8 gives a detailed description of the pixel shader architecture.

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Pixel shader programs can be divided into two parts, as shown in Figure 9. The first
part is called the address shader, which performs up to eight mathematical operations
(addition, multiplication, dot product, etc.) on texture co-ordinates or addresses. Up to six
textures can be sampled either before or after the address shader is executed. The ability to
sample a texture value, modify that value in the address shader, and use the modified value
as an address to sample a different texture, allow pixel shaders to perform what are known
as dependent texture reads. This technique is necessary to accomplish environment mapped
bump mapping, anisotropic lighting, and many other important effects. The second part of
a pixel shader is known as the color shader, which consists of up to eight instructions that
blend and modify the values (usually colors) of previously sampled textures to give the
final pixel color. Whereas DirectX® 8.0 used different instruction sets for the color shader
and the address shader, DirectX® 8.1 simplifies things by using the same instruction set for
both parts of the pixel shader.

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SMARTSHADER™ ADVANTAGES

Programmable shaders are intended to give 3D application developers the ability to

devise and implement a practically infinite range of visual effects. However, as mentioned
earlier, existing programmable shader implementations place significant limits on what
developers can actually do.
These constraints can be narrowed down into the following categories:
• Number of Input Variables
• Maximum Program Length
• Instruction Set
• Performance
The improvements offered by SMARTSHADER™ technology provide more
variables to work with, allow longer shader programs, employ a more versatile instruction
set, and open up more opportunities to save memory bandwidth and increase performance.
These improvements were designed to release the constraints on 3D application developers
by allowing them to use more sophisticated rendering techniques.
The table below compares some of the key specifications of the existing DirectX®
8.0 programmable shader standards:

This comparison highlights the imbalance between DirectX® 8.0 vertex and pixel
shaders. Although vertex shaders are already quite flexible, pixel shaders are severely
restricted in the number of effects they can be programmed to implement. The main reason
for this is performance. A typical 3D scene might contain dozens or even hundreds of times
more pixels than vertices, and so on existing graphics processors pixel shader programs
must be less complex in order to maintain interactive frame rates. SMARTSHADER™
technology is designed for the next generation of high performance graphics processors,
where executing complex pixel shaders will become more feasible. Thus, most of the
SMARTSHADER™ improvements involve pixel shaders, with only minor instruction set
enhancements being added to vertex shaders.

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These are summarized in the following table:

In order to run at smooth frame rates, pixel shaders must be executed tens of millions
of times per second, making performance a key concern. Every time a pixel passes through
the rendering pipeline, it consumes precious memory bandwidth as data is read from and
written to texture memory, the depth buffer, and the frame buffer. By decreasing the
number of times each pixel on the screen has to pass through the rendering pipeline,
memory bandwidth consumption can be reduced and the performance impact of using pixel
shaders can be minimized. DirectX® 8.1 pixel shaders allow up to six textures to be
sampled and blended in a single rendering pass. This means effects that required multiple
rendering passes in earlier versions of DirectX® can now be processed in fewer passes, and
effects that were previously too slow to be useful can become more practical to implement.
Numerous textures are needed to create truly realistic scenes that contain bumpy surfaces
combined with diffuse, specular and anisotropic lighting effects from multiple sources, as
well as realistic reflections and shadows.
DirectX® 8.0 pixel shaders can use a maximum of four texture addressing (address
shader) instructions and eight texture blending (color shader) instructions. While this
allows much more complex effects than can be provided by a fixed function rendering
pipeline, there are still many effects that are impossible to achieve with this limited number
instructions. The most powerful capabilities of programmable pixel shaders are provided
by the texture sampling and addressing instructions. With only four such instructions,
DirectX® 8.0 pixel shaders are restricted to just 40 meaningful ways in which textures can
be addressed. DirectX® 8.1 pixel shaders separate the sampling and addressing
instructions, giving a total of up to 14 instructions to work with in the address shader. This

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change allows textures to be addressed and sampled in a virtually unlimited number of
ways, and enables a wide range effects not possible with DirectX® 8.0.
Another area in which DirectX® 8.0 pixel shaders had room for improvement was
their instruction set. Two different sets of operations were used for address shaders and
color shaders. Whereas the color shader instructions were fairly simple mathematical
operations, the address shader instructions were relatively complex and inflexible.
DirectX® 8.1 simplifies the pixel shader language by allowing the color shader instruction
set to be used for address shaders as well. In addition to making pixel shaders easier to
write, this new approach removes many of the data type incompatibilities that arose from
using two different languages in a single shader, meaning that many effects can now be
accomplished with fewer instructions than before.

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PIXEL SHADER EFFECTS

The following examples provide just a glimpse at the many types of pixel effects that
are now possible only with SMARTSHADER™ technology. While most vertex shader
effects involve altering the shape and position of objects, most pixel shader effects are
focused on controlling the material properties and texture of surfaces. Many of these effects
are accomplished using texture addressing instructions to perform mathematical operations
on the texture co-ordinates passed into the pixel shader, then using these modified co-
ordinates to perform dependent texture reads.
Single Pass, Per-Pixel Rendering of Multiple Light Sources
Some of the most important effects made possible by SMARTSHADER™
technology involves perpixel lighting from multiple light sources. Making use of all six
texture inputs to the pixel shaders, bumpy objects can be made to accurately reflect light
from multiple sources in a single rendering pass. Light sources can include environment
maps (providing realistic reflections), point lights, spotlights, glowing objects, and more.
See Figure 10.

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True Phong Shading

Phong shading is a mathematical model that forms the basis of most lighting
calculations in 3D applications today. It divides incoming light into three components
(ambient, diffuse, and specular), and given the properties of the surface it is shining on,
determines the final color the viewer will see at any given point. The equation used is as
follows:

Because this equation is so complex and has so many variables, most graphics
applications can only use a simplified approximation. SMARTSHADER™ technology
allows the full Phong shading equation to be implemented, even for multiple light sources.
Any variable in the equation, such as k (which controls “shininess”), can be varied across
any surface using specialized texture maps. The result is that any kind of material can be
made to look extremely realistic (see Figure 11).

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Anisotropic Lighting
While Phong shading works well for materials that are basically smooth, many
surfaces in the real world like cloth, hair, and sand are made up of many small strands or
particles. This characteristic causes them to reflect light in unusual ways, and it can only be
modeled properly on a computer screen using a technique known as anisotropic lighting.
Anisotropic lighting uses complex functions known as BRDFs (Bidirectional Reflectance
Distribution Functions) to determine how light bounces off a surface as a function of the
viewing angle. The results of these functions are stored in special lookup table textures that
are unique to each particular type of surface. An example of this is shown in Figure 12.

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Advanced Bump Mapping

Bump mapping has been demonstrated as a useful technique for improving the
realism of surfaces without requiring a huge amount of additional geometry data. Both
Environment Mapped Bump Mapping (which works best on shiny surfaces) and Dot
Product 3 Bump Mapping (which works best on matte surfaces) can be implemented using
pixel shader. ATI’s SMARTSHADER™ technology makes it possible to go a step further
with more advanced bump mapping effects, such as self-shadowing bump maps (also
known as Horizon Mapping) and the ability to combine multiple bump maps (see Figure 13
below).

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Procedural Textures
Detailed textures normally require large amounts of graphics memory for storage, which
limits the variety of textures and amount of detail that can be used. However, with
SMARTSHADER™ technology it has become possible to create a wide variety of
interesting textures using mathematical functions, which require little or no memory
storage because they are generated on the graphics chip. One example of this technique is
shown in Figure 14.

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CONCLUSION

ATI’s new SMARTSHADER™ technology allows developers of 3D games and

other applications to unleash their creativity with a fully programmable graphics pipeline
for both geometry processing and rendering. Vertex shaders enable custom transform and
lighting effects, giving complete control over the shape and position of 3D characters,
objects, and environments. Pixel shaders enable a huge number of different per-pixel
effects, allowing accurate simulations of the natural properties of materials such as hair,
cloth, metal, glass, and water that were previously difficult to achieve in real-time
applications. Important visual cues such as reflections, highlights, and shadows from
multiple light sources can also be rendered with unprecedented speed and accuracy. Both
pixel and vertex shaders are accessible using the DirectX® 8.1 API from Microsoft as well
as OpenGL® extensions from ATI.SMARTSHADER™ technology takes a major step
beyond existing hardware shader implementations with support for up to six textures per
rendering pass, nearly double the number of instructions, and a new and improved shading
language that provides greater flexibility and ease of use. These advancements greatly
increase the number of graphical effects that can be created, improve performance by
conserving memory bandwidth, and allow more games and other applications to take
advantage of the technology. With SMARTSHADER™ technology, the pace of graphical
innovation will accelerate, and the gap in visual quality between what has been seen in
movies and what appears on the computer screen will become narrower than ever before.

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ABSTRACT

SMARTSHADER™ technology brings a new level of graphical effects to personal

computers. It allows software developers to use techniques that, until recently, were only
available to the creators of non-interactive computer generated movies and special effects,
and bring them to interactive computer games, the world wide web, and digital content
creation applications.
SMARTSHADER™ technology takes a major step beyond existing hardware shader
implementations with support for up to six textures per rendering pass, nearly double the
number of instructions, and a new and improved shading language that provides greater
flexibility and ease of use.

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CONTENTS\

 Introduction 1
 SmartshaderTM Technology 2
 Programmable Shaders and Fixed Functions 4
 The 3D graphics pipeline 6
 Vertex Shaders 8
 Vertex Shaders Effects 9
 Shadow Volumes 10
 Pixel Shaders 11
 Smart ShaderTM Advantages 13
 Pixel Shaders Effects 16
 Conclusion 21

ATI TECHNOLOGIES INC.

33 Commerce Valley Drive East
Markham, Ontario, Canada L3T 7N6
Telephone: (905) 882-2600
Facsimile: (905) 882-2620
www.ati.com
ATI TECHNOLOGIES
SYSTEMS CORP.
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Santa Clara, CA 95051-0917
Telephone: (408) 845-6500
Facsimile: (408) 845-6301
ATI TECHNOLOGIES
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