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from the all-the-better-to-display-double-wide-and-double-tall-characters dept.
Intel beats AMD and Nvidia to crowd-pleasing graphics feature: integer scaling
Intel Gen11 and next-gen graphics will support integer scaling following requests by the community. Intel's Lisa Pearce confirmed that a patch will roll out sometime in August for Gen11 chips, adding support for the highly-requested functionality in the Intel Graphics Command Center, with future Intel Xe graphics expected to follow suit in 2020.
Enthusiasts have been calling out for the functionality for quite some time, even petitioning AMD and Nvidia for driver support. Why, you ask? Essentially integer scaling is an upscaling technique that takes each pixel at, let's say, 1080p, and times it by four – a whole number. The resulting 4K pixel values are identical to their 1080p original values, however, the user retains clarity and sharpness in the final image.
Current upscaling techniques, such as bicubic or bilinear, interpolate colour values for pixels, which often renders lines, details, and text blurry in games. This is particularly noticeable in pixel art games, whose art style relies on that sharp, blocky image. Other upscaling techniques, such as nearest-neighbour interpolation, carry out a similar task to integer scaling but on a more precise scale, which can similarly cause image quality loss.
It's baffling that this feature hasn't been available for years.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 26 2019, @04:13AM (8 children)
Intel just invented multiplying by 4 in software?
(Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday June 26 2019, @04:25AM
quick maths
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 5, Funny) by coolgopher on Wednesday June 26 2019, @04:34AM (4 children)
We always knew they were shifty.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 26 2019, @04:36AM (2 children)
FTFY.
(Score: 2) by Kilo110 on Wednesday June 26 2019, @04:45AM (1 child)
I think he made a bit shift joke
(Score: 3, Touché) by coolgopher on Wednesday June 26 2019, @05:02AM
I think the AC made a word play joke
(Score: 3, Funny) by RS3 on Wednesday June 26 2019, @04:46AM
Doubly!
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Rupert Pupnick on Wednesday June 26 2019, @03:51PM (1 child)
It’s not even multiplying by 4. It’s “take this pixel value and copy it in to these three adjacent pixel addresses”.
Why would this take significant processing power?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 26 2019, @10:00PM
Let me explain with pseudo-opcodes.
Basic:
New opcode:
One is 5 ops per loop, one is four. Because these are single tick GPU ops (remember the latter is being added!) it is actually faster.