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SMARTSHADER TECHNOLOGY WHITE PAPER

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.