A fixed-point RISC graphics engine

Looks at the use of special-purpose processors, customised for the specific computational problems of real-time image generation. With recent advances in ASIC technologies, this option is now viable. It is possible to design reduced instruction set computers (RISCs), using semi-custom VLSI design styles, which enable processors to be optimised for specific applications. A major and complex part of processor design is the design of the arithmetic logic unit and this phase of processor design can be simplified by omitting floating-point arithmetic operations. The author describes the development of a RISC processor which uses a fixed-point instruction set which has been optimised to compute the geometric operations required for image generation