295 Tiny Shader

295 : Tiny Shader

  • Author: Leo Moser
  • Description: With Tiny Shader you can write a small program to create different images and even animations.
  • GitHub repository
  • Clock: 25175000 Hz

How it works

Modern GPUs use fragment shaders to determine the final color for each pixel. Thousands of shading units run in parallel to speed up this process and ensure that a high FPS ratio can be achieved.

Tiny Shader mimics such a shading unit and executes a shader with 10 instructions for each pixel. No framebuffer is used, the color values are generated on the fly. Tiny Shader also offers an SPI interface via which a new shader can be loaded. The final result can be viewed via the VGA output at 640x480 @ 60 Hz, although at an internal resolution of 64x48 pixel.

Examples

These images and many more can be generated with Tiny Shader. Note, that shaders can even be animated by acessing the user or time register.

test2.png test4.png test5.png test7.png

The shader for the last image is shown here:

# Shader to display a rainbow colored sine wave

# Clear R3
CLEAR R3

# Get the sine value for x and add the user value
GETX R0
GETUSER R1
ADD R0 R1

# Set default color to R0
SETRGB R0

# Get the sine value for R0
SINE R0
HALF R0

# Get y coord
GETY R1

# If the sine value is greater
# or equal y, set color to black
IFGE R1
SETRGB R3

Architecture

Tiny Shader has four (mostly) general purpose registers, REG0 to REG3. REG0 is special in a way as it is the target or destination register for some instructions. All registers are 6 bit wide.

Input

The shader has four sources to get input from:

  • X - X position of the current pixel
  • Y - Y position of the current pixel
  • TIME - Increments at 7.5 Hz, before it overflow it counts down again.
  • USER - Register that can be set via the SPI interface.
Output

The goal of the shader is to determine the final output color:

  • RGB - The output color for the current pixel. Channel R, G and B can be set individually. If not set, the color of the previous pixel is used.
Sine Look Up Table

Tiny Shader contains a LUT with 16 6-bit sine values for a quarter of a sine wave. When accesing the LUT, the entries are automatically mirrored to form one half of a sine wave with a total of 32 6-bit values.

Instructions

The following instructions are supported by Tiny Shader. A program consists of 10 instructions and is executed for each pixel individually. The actual resolution is therefore one tenth of the VGA resolution (64x48 pixel).

Output
Instruction Operation Description
SETRGB RA RGB <= RA Set the output color to the value of the specified register.
SETR RA R <= RA[1:0] Set the red channel of the output color to the lower two bits of the specified register.
SETG RA G <= RA[1:0] Set the green channel of the output color to the lower two bits of the specified register.
SETB RA B <= RA[1:0] Set the blue channel of the output color to the lower two bits of the specified register.
Input
Instruction Operation Description
GETX RA RA <= X Set the specified register to the x position of the current pixel.
GETY RA RA <= Y Set the specified register to the y position of the current pixel.
GETTIME RA RA <= TIME Set the specified register to the current time value, increases with each frame.
GETUSER RA RA <= USER Set the specified register to the user value, can be set via the SPI interface.
Branches
Instruction Operation Description
IFEQ RA TAKE <= RA == R0 Execute the next instruction if RA equals R0.
IFNE RA TAKE <= RA != R0 Execute the next instruction if RA does not equal R0.
IFGE RA TAKE <= RA >= R0 Execute the next instruction if RA is greater then or equal R0.
IFLT RA TAKE <= RA < R0 Execute the next instruction if RA is less than R0.
Arithmetic
Instruction Operation Description
DOUBLE RA RA <= RA * 2 Double the value of RA.
HALF RA RA <= RA / 2 Half the value of RA.
ADD RA RB RA <= RA + RB Add RA and RB, result written into RA.
Load
Instruction Operation Description
CLEAR RA RA <= 0 Clear RA by writing 0.
LDI IMMEDIATE RA <= IMMEDIATE Load an immediate value into RA.
Special
Instruction Operation Description
SINE RA RA <= SINE[R0[4:0]] Get the sine value for R0 and write into RA. The sine value LUT has 32 entries.
Boolean
Instruction Operation Description
AND RA RB RA <= RA & RB Boolean AND of RA and RB, result written into RA.
OR RA RB RA <= RA | RB Boolean OR of RA and RB, result written into RA.
NOT RA RB RA <= ~RB Invert all bits of RB, result written into RA.
XOR RA RB RA <= RA ^ RB XOR of RA and RB, result written into RA.
Move
Instruction Operation Description
MOV RA RB RA <= RB Move value of RB into RA.
Shift
Instruction Operation Description
SHIFTL RA RB RA <= RA << RB Shift RA with RB to the left, result written into RA.
SHIFTR RA RB RA <= RA >> RB Shift RA with RB to the right, result written into RA.
Pseudo
Instruction Operation Description
NOP R0 <= R0 & R0 No operation.

How to test

First set the clock to 25.175 MHz and reset the design. For a simple test, simply connect a Tiny VGA to the output Pmod. A shader is loaded by default and an image should be displayed via VGA.

For advanced features, connect an SPI controller to the bidir pmod. If ui[0], the mode signal, is set to 0, you can write to the user register via SPI. Note that only the last 6 bit are used.

If the mode signal is 1, all bytes transmitted via SPI are shifted into the shader memory. This way you can load a new shader program. Have fun!

External hardware

  • Tiny VGA or similar VGA Pmod
  • Optional: SPI controller to write the user register and new shaders

IO

#InputOutputBidirectional
0modeR[1]CS
1debug_i[0]G[1]MOSI
2debug_i[1]B[1]MISO
3vsyncSCK
4R[0]next_vertical
5G[0]next_frame
6B[0]debug_o[0]
7hsyncdebug_o[1]

Chip location

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(ledcontroller) tt_um_digitaler_filter_rathmayr (Digitaler Filter) tt_um_histefan_top (Snake Game) tt_um_mayrmichael_wave_generator (Wave Generator) tt_um_advanced_counter (jku-tt06-advanced-counter) tt_um_FanCTRL_DomnikBrandstetter (PI-Based Fan Controller) tt_um_ps2_morse_encoder_top (PS/2 Keyboard to Morse Code Encoder) tt_um_calculator_muehlbb (16-bit calculator) tt_um_hpretl_tt06_tempsens (Temperature Sensor NG) tt_um_haeuslermarkus_fir_filter (FIR Filter with adaptable coefficients) tt_um_mattvenn_rgb_mixer (RGB Mixer demo) tt_um_analog_loopback (Analog loopback) tt_um_entwurf_integrierter_schaltungen_hadner (Projekt KEIS Hadner Thomas) tt_um_seven_segment_fun1 (7-segment-FUN) tt_um_moving_average_master (Moving average filter) tt_um_rgbled_decoder (SPI to RGBLED Decoder/Driver) tt_um_4bit_cpu_with_fsm (4-Bit CPU mit FSM) tt_um_flappy_bird (Flappy Bird) tt_um_drops (drops) tt_um_enieman (UART-Programmable RISC-V 32I Core) tt_um_gabejessil_timer (2 Player Game) 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giro de motor CD) tt_um_ancho (Circuito PWM con ciclo de trabajo configurable) tt_um_wokwi_395618714068432897 (32b Fibonacci Original) tt_um_voting_thingey (Voting thingey) tt_um_hsc_tdc_buf (UCSC HW Systems Collective, TDC - BUF2x1) tt_um_hsc_tdc_mux (UCSC HW Systems Collective, TDC - MUX2x1) tt_um_petersn_micro1 (14 Hour Simple Computer) tt_um_sanojn_tlv2556_interface (UART interface to ADC TLV2556 (VHDL Test)) tt_um_gray_sobel (Gray scale and Sobel filter) tt_um_wokwi_395614106833794049 (Universal gates) Available Available Available Available Available Available Available Available Available Available Available Available Available Available Available Available Available Available Available Available Available Available Available Available Available Available Available Available Available Available Available Available Available Available Available Available Available Available Available Available Available Available Available Available Available Available Available Available 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