Simulation and development environment for mobile 3D graphics architectures

This paper describes a simulation and development environment for designing mobile three-dimensional (3D) graphics architectures. The proposed simulation and verification environment (SVE) uses glTrace´s ability to intercept and redirect an OpenGL|ES streams. The SVE simulates the behaviour of mobile 3D graphics pipeline during the playback of traces and produces the second geometry trace that can be used as a test vector for the Verilog/hardware discription language RT-level model. An architectural verification can be conducted by comparing the frame-by-frame results. The functionality of the SVE is demonstrated by designing a mobile 3D graphics architecture and implementing the verified architecture on field programmable gate array (FPGA) boards. An application development environment (ADE) is also presented that includes a mobile graphics application programming interface and a device driver interface. The proposed SVE and the ADE could be efficiently used for developing and testing mobile applications, architectural analysis and hardware designs.