3D graphics accelerator platform for mobile devices

Even in the POST-PC era, the need for 3D graphics has steadily increased. In the design of the 3D graphics accelerator for mobile devices, the physical limitation such as power, size and input device must be considered. Moreover, the 3D graphics accelerator should reside in a single chip (SoC) with other blocks such as CPU, audio, video decoder and peripheral blocks. This work describes the design and implementation of mobile 3D graphics accelerator platform. We propose a mobile 3D graphics accelerator platform that has good performance and small size, and supports standard 3D graphics API (application programming interface). Proposed 3D graphics accelerator platform supports hardware Goraud shading, texture mapping, back & front face culling, Z buffering and alpha blending. This platform was verified on a FPGA test board with standard 3D API. It is suitable for cost effective mobile 3D platform such as smart phone, PDA (personal digital assistant), and other mobile devices.